Well, either way you look at it...it’s a 10 year old hose! It is a piece of rubber any way you look at it. Whether it was a repeated thermal failure, or potential dry rot...it’s just one of those things. Like you said, it wouldn’t hurt to go ahead and change the thermostat while you’re in there. Cheap insurance for sure. Mine is an ‘07 as well. I’m sitting at 124k miles. You’re doing pretty good with your mileage! I’ve blown the upper rad hose off of my SRT8, twice in the past 6 months. I just bought a 1 piece upper for it a couple of weeks ago though. I also decided to go ahead and do the upper and lower on my JK while I was up to the task and had pretty much all of the needed tools out anyways.