Well, my own feeling is that it was earlier than this year, but yes, the general consensus seems to be that upgrades tend to post later than they once did. AA probably did this to make sure they didn't lose out on revenue from last-minute travelers; if you post all your upgrades at T-100 and then a few people try to buy J the next day and can't, that's a fairly obvious loss from their perspective.

The somewhat less obvious part is the compositional effect on which EXPs actually get the upgrades. This change kind of dovetails with the list order changes in May 2017 (list was ordered by date of booking, now it's by EQD); both changes greatly benefit flyers that book last minute, high-priced tickets, at the expense of flyers that tend to book early for lower cost. Both changes appear to have caused quite a bit of consternation around here, but it's important to recognize that this is more or less a zero-sum thing; for every EXP who finds himself lower in the lists now, there's one who finds himself higher.

I'm one of the big beneficiaries of the new policy. I typically book no more than 48 hours out, and tend to fly lots of regional routes that have a high price/mile; before the EQD change I cleared less than half the time, and often by the time I booked J would already be full or close to it because they had already processed some upgrades. That was sort of a drag. I knew my behavior was exactly what the airline really wanted...but they were giving all the upgrades to flyers who were behaving in ways much less beneficial to AA. The system effectively had a clear bias in favor of the people who paid the least for their tickets. The new system strikes me as a lot more sensible. Of course my self-interest aligns there too (2018 upgrade success >80%), so go figure. But I just wanted to point out that there are good effects for a lot of people from these changes.

That said, hope you clear before T-24 so you can get that meal preordered.