What is happening is anything but off the cuff and the Covid shutdown simply accelerated the plan.
In the last few months there has been 1 major competitive challenge to the DA, which was the USL announced and was set to begin the USL-A youth system.
As you may or may not know, back in 2015/16, US Soccer hired a company out of Belgium, called DoublePASS which is a football auditing firm that helped the Germany and Belgium and many clubs and leagues previously. DoublePASS visited the MLS and other DA programs. The basic conclusions were that the USA system was seriously broken and hamstrung by a system that dissuaded investment in players. The DoublePASS auditors preliminary assessments were not good.
In 2019, the MLS changed course on Solidarity and Training Fees and (despite US Soccer's insistence to remain neutral) embraced the FIFA player investment compensation system the rest of the world embraced. What the MLS began doing behind the scenes was preparing for an eventually separation from the DA League, the first step was to divide the DA league into DA 1 (MLS teams and a few others) and DA 2 for the 2021 season ... then Covid hapens. The MLS accelerates the plan threatening to pull all MLS teams earlier than anticipated. US Soccer now has a perfect excuse and everybody saves face.
Ultimately, this has been the plan and in line with the preliminary recommendations of the DoublePASS auditors to bring US Soccer professional development in line with the rest of the world. It starts with the MLS teams putting on their big boy pants and taking ownership of its youth academies, investing in its youth academies and treating the boys in those academies as assets.
Off the cuff? No. This has been the plan, it just is happening sooner than originally intended thanks to Covid, but that really is a good thing.
The benefit of moving toward highly competitive youth academies that treat the athletes as investments also means that we will also be looking to improve the quality in the 2nd Division. If the USL can rise to the challenge, if not, the MLS will be forced to make a move there as well. For the time being, however, the trend is all positive. US Soccer is no longer pressuring players to play in the MLS, which is currently substandard, and encouraging our talent to move to European leagues as soon as possible.