I don't think any of this is typical. You're at the end of a week with a HUGE conference (Advertising Week) in town and with a combination of bad weather for the past couple of days and an impending possible hurricane.
Also, for the purposes of your calculations, I'd assume that most of the F seats on the flight have been paid for (not necessarily by EXPs) and that, in fact, some of the people ahead of you on the upgrade list may be people who paid for first but have had their flights cancelled or are trying to proactively move to earlier flights. (This would also explain why the flight is zeroed out but not oversold--AA is presumably trying to deal with or anticipate IRROps)