Its not a joke when the director themselves are correcting the vague language of "Production reasons" in the official post to just confirm the team would not have completed the episode on time. All that is coming from an experienced director. Some of his tweets when he said we are working on the episode were sometimes at midnight in Japan local time. He may be exaggerating but the fact they were overworking to just complete the episodes on time is a fact.
https://x.com/tsuki_akari/status/1801205214651023650