double barrel,
Some thoughts from me. If you have an engine failure and turn to point at the airfield on a track that is roughly aligned with the runway the first decision is whether or not you have the energy (airspeed and height) to make a downwind 'low key' position such that you can make a finals turn to land on the into wind/take-off runway. If you do not have sufficient energy for that option then you must land straight on the downwind runway or land off airfield. There are some considerations and practicalities in these cases but please note that these are generic and are not all are applicable to this incident.
There is a tendency with the downwind/low key option of using an aim point to focus on the runway threshold or even 1/3 into the runway whereas what is required is an aim point which, worst case, allows a touchdown with just sufficient runway remaining to stop. In many cases this is well past the midpoint of the runway and unless the pilot has thought about and practised this it is not an intuitive pattern. Sadly, a frequent result of attempting such a pattern is that energy is too low and a stall during the finals turn occurs. The Red Arrows accident at Valley in 2018 is a case in point.
For the straight in approach, if high/excessive energy exists there are three potential ways of losing energy, although it may not be feasible to use all of them in a given aircraft type. First, sideslip to generate drag, and if this is feasible it is often the best option. Secondly, aggressive 'S' turns but there is a definite stall potential in doing this unless the pilot is very experienced, especially on type, and has a good understanding of the accelerated stall characteristics of the aircraft type. Thirdly, diving to increase speed such that the increase in zero lift drag causes a significant energy loss and then a prolonged flare to hold off to a normal touchdown speed, although this relies on an aircraft that has high zero lift drag anyhow and does not apply to many light aircraft. In this straight-in situation there is also the possibility of having insufficient energy to make the runway in which case an early decision must be made to pick a field for an off-airfield forced landing.
In the case of the video that you have posted, we must be careful in interpreting the energy state because upon the camera lens characteristics. The upper and lower views give a different impression of flightpath angle so it is difficult to judge the energy state of the aircraft versus range from the runway. Also, the tailwind component would have affected the flightpath and this has not been quoted. However, I would doubt if a downwind/low key option was an option. I don't know the characteristics of a C172 but I doubt if the option of diving to lose energy was worthwhile. Very few pilots have practised hard 'S' turning so it would have been unwise to attempt this if not practised. The decision on sideslipping or not may have been driven by many factors, such as Flight Manual advice and familiarity, but the key is that the approach and touchdown point must be judged with respect to the far end of the runway and not the threshold and if there is one point to take away from this incident then perhaps that is it. It appears to me that the judgement here was correct because the outcome was very successful.
My experience of single-engined aircraft engine failures is on types that are considerably heavier and faster than the C172 but the principles were the same. However, the one that sticks in my mind is when a friend suffered a catastrophic crankshaft failure, could see a suitable runway so turned towards it but decided too late that he could not reach it, turned hard to avoid the woods short of the runway, stalled, crashed and was killed. And I had flown that aircraft on the previous sortie and went to the crash site with the accident investigation team the next day. Some things stay with you very vividly for ever.
I hope that this has been useful.