Imagine an NFL season where the league's best record was 11-5, and the league's 2nd best team barely reached 10 wins. Obviously, that would never happen. But it's totally understandable that a projection system would state this just one game into a season. Any projection this early in the season has to account for so many "what if" scenarios that they couldn't justify projecting even the best teams for 12 wins, despite the fact that having multiple 12 game winners is inevitable. Their projections on point differential are similarly cautious. It's such a wide spectrum of possibilities at this point, that when you split the difference it moves the expected result closer to the middle of the data.
If Seattle is the #2 team in the NFL at the end of the year in ELO, you can probably pencil them for more than 10 wins.
That said, I do get kind of a 10-6 vibe from the Hawks right now. The team has felt estranged from their identity ever since the preseason kicked off, and their road schedule this year has got to be the nastiest in the NFL. I think if Seattle wants to reach 12-4 this year, it will require a very high number of heroic comebacks and close wins, with very few heartbreaking losses.
