The way I see it, all the airmanship advice contained in the text in the QRH and FCTM are elements that should be considered before during and after actioning specific non-normal checklists. The non-normal checklist should not be robotically called without considering the possible ramifications if other measure are not considered first.
You are quite right of course. But in my experience and particularly with certain cultures, the checklist becomes God and certainly in a court case, lawyers would likely seize on checklist omissions as proof of incompetency and conveniently disregard the small print or amplification in manuals such as the FCTM.