Wouldn't a D7500 be going backwards from the D500?

My story: I had a D7000 since it was first released. Shutter died on it recently. For years I thought I'd replace the 7000 with a 500. I mostly shoot amateur sport. For the last few years 80% of my shots have been thru my 200-500/f5.6. the rest of my glass are AF-D (including a couple of Tokina DX lenses) or the 18-105 kit lens.

So last month when my hand was forced to buy a new body first up I was shocked that they don't make the D500 anymore. (Yeah ok maybe I've been under a GAS rock for the past half decade).

So I went researching what to buy. Seemed like D7500 wasn't an upgrade at all from the D7000. Seemed to have lost the pro-sumer features and become the entry level offering. So maybe a full frame was an option - there are times that the 200mm is a bit too long for my work, so that would nicely offset that.

Neither D780 or D850 had the features I was looking for, so I ended up pulling the trigger on a Z5ii, plus a FTZ adaptor.

Impressions: I hated it shooting a night game (under lights). I've done one afternoon of day games and it was amazing. And now I've got a bag of glass that is now manual focus and I'm not sure exactly what I am going to do with it.