tower speakers fried

So i purchased 2 jl 7.7's for my mb and the previous owner had 2 boss audio tower speakers that were ok but i wanted more and better sound. these were new speakers never used from my local jl dealer. The boss speakers were [powered by an Exile harpoon amp which from what i researched is a 250x2 at 4ohm so i figured it would be ok to use on the jl's. I left the gain about a 1/4 up, and htz 80-100 give or take and they sounded great. The 4th of july was my first day to use them on the lake and about an hour after using them they started to cut in and out. I checked all the connections and everything was solid but after that all i heard was a little sound from the tweeters. I returned them to the place i bought them and he said the woofers were frozen stiff and smelled burned when he took them out of the cans. Was it too much power? i figured since the boss speakers were running fine off that amp surely the jl speakers would be fine. Hoping it was a manufacture defect and not user error.