From the report it looks more like a rushed and impossible approach to me - especially with the reduced track miles. They were too close with too much energy to accept the shorter routing.
They then seem to have got into a right bugger's muddle with the 737 "automation" and were at least 10nm behind the aircraft - not a good place to be.
Whatever it was, it seems amazing that pilot recruitment these days concentrates on how many verbal reasoning and maths questions you can do in 10 minutes, and clever answers to HR questions, rather than being able to actually fly a plane with Situational Awareness.