And if not, that's a much better thing to focus on vs whether they took a few days off for whatever reason.

Exactly

I cannot say all of them were performing bad

But yeah, some of them... Definitely.

Someone said in another thread, it's none of my business. Indeed. Especially as an external. I also would never report any of my suspicion. Sometimes,however, I'm blocked by this (waiting on others, etc.) so not entirely unaffected, tho

Typically if such a thing catches your eye it’s because in fact they aren’t performing adequately.