I use an NR7101 and love it. How do you manage automatic reconnections following an ISP-disconnect? Are you using ModemManager? Because automatic reconnection on that is unfortunately broken at the moment - see:
Regarding title, if you were to scroll up to the top of this thread then next to the title there should be an edit button. Look it's entirely up to you whether to change, but I fear the word 'bricked' gives bad publicity in that individuals may see it as an OpenWrt failure rather than the OpenWrt success story that it actually is. So it might be beneficial to change the 'bricked?' to 'challenges'. But it's only a suggestion! As the original poster you hold the keys.