Would love to say that there was a technical issue with this aircraft, can't find any justification for that however. The aircraft at all times responded correctly and promptly to the flight crew input.
Countering the stuck spoiler case, the aircraft yaws on the ground to follow the rudder,
"and the rudder is responding correctly to the rudder pedal"
Not so.
The data shows that the rudder position appears to be feeding back to the pedals, in what should be an irreversible control system, .
I won't even try to dispute the technical part of your analysis. Having said that:
- The captain was (most probably) the only pilot with feet on the pedals.
- Those pedals ended up deflected to the left.
- The airplane turned to the left, and after rotation banked to the left.
- The captain commented the aircraft banked left, but not did comment the rudder pedals deflected uncommanded.
And while I cannot understand how a 20K hour pilot can make such a basic mistake, I feel it is more likely than a failure leading to an uncommanded input that wasn't recognized by the pilot.