You are much closer to the situation than I am DA, but I think that is a pretty good reading. I think they played well over their heads in the first Euro qualifying match at Wembley, taking advantage of English overconfidence and unpreparedness, then benefitted from a brilliant tactical substitution against Germany in the Euros, and then got unlucky against Turkey. Then since fallen back to reality due to a lot of things you mentioned, including lack of quality and depth on the back line. Overconfidnce. Focusing only on England, looking past the qualifying stages particularly Ukraine who is an improved squad. Maybe there was some letdown after the 5-1 shellacking in Wembley. I dont know, that was the only match I was able to wathc.overconfident in days that predeceased the two matches against England [or at least that's how it looked like in Croatian medias] and that a combination of various mentality-type reasons eventually turned the unrealistic general public's expectations into unneeded pressure and subsequently into disappointment and disillusion.
The funniest theory I've heard is that since England was essentially playing a friendly against Ukraine on Sat since they had already secured their spot in the Finals, and knew what the match meant to Vatreni hopes, they (maybe didnt "tank" the match, but) didnt give it their all as payback / vegence for Vatreni knocking them out of the Euro qualifiers. heh. All's fair in love and football.
