@Australopithecus
It appears quite likely that in aftermath of FAA reform legislation passed and enacted into law last year that the agency heard and got the message - at least in large part. The reforms included items which were written in order to give the Congressional committees with jurisdiction for FAA authorization, oversight, and spending more effective capacity to fulfill those responsibilities.
As a previous post noted, possible that a high-integrity engineer quietly urged FAA to hold nothing back. (Kind of like the basketball coach in "Hoosiers" quietly urging the ref to eject him from the game.)
Got to wonder whether the changes made by the reform legislation with regard to delegation to Boeing were written in such a way as to give some impetus to restoring the company corporate office to the Seattle area. I swear by Chicago, but Carl Sandburg wrote of railroads, hogs and wheat not airframes and powerplants.