I would say that the trend against actual agile and towards waterfall (PRDs are totally en vogue) suggests that deadlines are how most company management looks at this. Definitely not suggesting it is right, but "really aggressive 'estimates' (that are accurate beyond human ability) you can plan on", aka deadlines, are expected of any product/engineering org today.
Tell me a story I want to believe, even if it isn't true. Then you can make it the teams' fault because they said they would and didn't.