I'm not going to disagree with you, Jamie, because I've only watched the first episode, but the "badmirals" have outnumbered the admirals 10 to 1 in Trek for a long time.
One thing I hated about the novel continuity is that they made Section 31 be led by an evil super computer/a.i. Which is kinda lame, but what really sucked is that they retconned a bunch of Federation history so that you find out a good chunk of Trek has all been part of the a.i.'s master plan. So it's been all badmirals and section 31 from the start. I think Discovery used at least part of this concept, but I haven't watched those particular episodes.
Speaking of the novels, this book is supposed to have some backstory on what Picard has been up to:
No idea if it's any good or not. The author wrote a great DS9 story years ago, but I haven't enjoyed her subsequent novels.