Sunday dinnr rolls

Can you explain what happened to my rolls?  I've been making these enriched rolls (butter, sugar, eggs--the works) for years with wonderful results.  I've become somewhat of a breadhead this last year and love doing the BBA challenge as well as learning from you guys.  When making my Sunday rolls in my KA, I just barely get them mixed good (double batch) probably originally because of time restraints, then let rise in a bowl while I mix up the next double batch (yep, big family).  Forgetting the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" thingy, I figured since I'd become much more serious about my bread baking I needed to knead the roll dough for at least 8 minutes, as most of the recipes say.  Well, to say they rose more is the extreme understatement!  I was using my convection oven, and the two pans on the uppermost shelf rose up into the coils.  Problem is, they were tough.  I made them this way twice with the same results.  I thought I had read that you could hardly over knead bread.  I've gone back to my old ways (barely kneading) with the good old results, but I would really like to know what happened.

Syb