side stick? no biggie
There is no big deal using the side stick.
A few thousand, well maybe hundreds, of pilots have flown the Viper since the mid 70's. Our ops chief demanded we all have one ride in the back seat of the family model to check out the stick. That requirement went away after about 6 months or less. I flew an old pilot ( hadn't flown in ten years or so) one day, and it took him all of ten seconds to get the "feel" of it.
The 'bus stick moves, and ours didn't/doesn't. Personally, and having flown PC sims and real aircraft sims, I prefer a stick that uses pressure more than actual movement.
As with the 'bus, the Viper stick is "canted" to help minimize roll inputs with pitch inputs and vice versa. Both jets' computers revert to trimmed gee and zero roll rate if you just let go of the stick. That's gear up, for the most part. Ours had a healthy AoA and pitch rate input with gear down, making the thing seem more like the "old" jets.
So I am not gonna blame the side stick for any contribution to this accident.