The world has moved on a long way, and perhaps not for the better. It seems more & more DFO/CP's don't trust the judgements of their captains. There was a day when you trained your crews well, had reasonably brief SOP's combined with the FCTM, and experienced captains. You gave them a duty and off they went will full confidence on both sides that they were equipped to handle what they would find.
The captain had auto-brakes, or not, Thrust reversers and a choice of flaps. You reviewed the weather and runway conditions and made a sensible judgement of how to combine them. OK, there might be an SOP that said minimum idle reverse, perhaps even AB 1. There might even be a request of F30 (B737) is suitable. You adjusted each item to create the most suitable combination. It's what experience captains do.
Having a standard landing config' and landing technique, come what may, encourages trained monkey non-thinking; and that will bite you very hard where the sun don't shine one day.
I did operate for a very young growing B733 operator who had a minimum idle reverse policy. Sometimes we used to land on a 3000m runway with the turnoff at the end. I confirmed no AB's was acceptable - yes - but what about no TR's; they were unnecessary. The sensible reply was, "if appropriate, select idle and then cancel will satisfy the SOP." I could live with that. It sometimes needed thrust to be added to expedite vacating.
The trained monkey thinking was shown quite often the F/O's selected F30, AB-3 because the runway was shortish, 2000m. Immediately on touchdown size 10's stamped on the brakes, disconnecting the AB's, and we had a very crowded cockpit. WTF?? "I wanted to make the shorter turnoff?" What about F40 then and AB-3? Uh, SOP is F30!. Agh!
I used to use F40, AB-3 and 'rest' my feet on the brakes as I pulled TR's. My belief was it stopped the AB's from releasing and thus you achieved brakes + TR's. Was I wrong?