Looking at the past dashboards and due dates I have a theory of what happened.
The hard goals came out a bit early at the end of October, the board due date was 17 September and it was supposed to start 1 November, NRC typically will get the list of applicants to the board a few weeks in advance with the selection goals, these numbers do align with what the original goals were. If there was a miscommunication or lack of communication then the board could have selected numbers that were estimated before the hard goals came out.