It wouldn't be an issue because the negative items fall into the "payment history" slice of the FICO pie, which comprises slightly more (35%) of one's score compared to the 30% from the "amounts owed" sector. With the presence of major negative items or even recent minors, that 35% slice of the pie is going to be severely impacted, but that is independent of the 30% of the FICO pie that the OP is referencing with respect to dropping his utilization significantly.
Whether or not someone has a clean or dirty score card can impact the signal strength of other scoring factors such as utilization, but I don't believe this difference to be significant. Here's an example with shooting from the hip numbers to illustrate what I mean:
Cornelius and Rupert have identical credit reports in all areas except for payment history. While Cornelius has a squeaky clean credit report, Rupert has at least 1 recent account with a major negative item, thus landing him a dirty scorecard. Like the OP, they both sit at 91% utilization and like the OP, both are about to pay off all their revolving debt. Cornelius has a current score of 670, while Rupert has a current score of 560. They both pay off all of their revolving debt. Cornelius' score increases to 755 and Rupert's increases to 635. In this example, Cornelius gained 10 more points than Rupert did for the same event. The reason for the 10 point variance could be because of the different signal strength of the utilization change relative to a clean verses dirty file.
Payment history and Amounts owed together comprise 2/3 of a FICO score. As a complete generalization, if you see a profile with both of these factors bad, scores may be in the mid 500's. If you see one of these factors bad, mid 600's. Neither of them bad, mid 700's. Certainly there are exceptions and variations along the way, but that's sort of what I've come to see most of the time.
