Theory - babies have to be a giant pain in the butt before they do a sleep progression. Thoughts?

So my second baby is 11 weeks and has been very challenging for the last week. His wake windows have gotten way shorter, grizzly, cries if we aren’t holding / talking to him, cat napping etc . BUT he’s currently been asleep 9.5 hrs!! What? He seems to have to be very challenging for a week then will start doing longer stretches. He did this around week 6 too when he started to do 3-4 hrs between feeds in the night. I know there are developmental leaps happening so maybe this is what’s happening? Or he’s just worn himself out from all the crying over the last 5 days lol. Wondered what other people think about my theory…