I have had the same situation. What I experienced was that things looked encouraging at first, but they continued to set new seed and the foliage has lessened over time. After a year-and-a-half, I gave up on my hopes for recovery, collected all the seed, and chopped down the sad-looking rhizomes. Now I'm re-growing from my seeds.

Gradually went almost bare of leaves, with many open spikelets evident. Now coming out like a new lawn. May be coinciding with falling off of production of new spikelets, flowers not dominating plants like earlier anyway. My first assumption would be also that it is just the plants maintaining themselves through the rest of the bloom, after which they will completely expire--except for points just mentioned. Maybe another set of flowers will come out next year, and all the new leaves will drop. Not going to be in a hurry to cut plants down, anyway.

Maybe you'll be lucky...report back in a year!

Friend I got the clone from says one he cut down because it was in the way of a project (and they die after blooming, right?) is coming back from the roots.

It's entirely reasonable to expect it to shoot after it's cut down. The issue is whether the new shoots are going to flower....

What I'm talking about here is previously leafless plants that have already gone completely to flowers and been in that condition for some time.