I feel like you didn't get the point. "us vs. them" is the smart(?) fans vs. creative. If they had gone hard on an AJ push everyone would have got all apathetic that "they're just building him up to feed to Roman!" but now everyone is excited...that they are going to feed him to Roman.
It is how someone like Dolph Ziggler has somehow still managed to get good reactions for years despite being terrible at everything except cutting promos whining about how he's booked.