No question that last minute awards on DL are high. On the other hand, for someone like me with a family of four who generally plans their vacation trips ahead and looks for coach awards, there are some values on DL. I'm seeing SFO-JFK from 9K miles one-way in coach on DL (10K in the summer) which I would consider a decent value. I realize I'm probably an outlier here on FT with a family, but not everyone's priorities are the same for their mileage redemptions.
Got a family here too, transfer my points from chase/diners, I end up sending them to WN over and over and over again, BA has better value than AA to book AA so why would you ever use AA points, but now its a mess and I can't tell you the last time I booked an AA trip for my family. Sure, every once in a while you get a last minute AA tickets for one person and it would be more on WN and yes WN has no first class tickets, but plenty of times there are half empty planes and no saver tickets on AA last minute and you can ALWAYS book WN. I don't actually care what we fly, but AA is a mess and keeps getting worse - and I live by MIA, it should be easy!
BTW - I save actual AA miles for trips to europe, that's about the only good redemption left. If a ticket is 12.5k, its probably on sale for $109 anyways.