Indeed some interesting points - however, I would go as far as to suggest that one shouldn't be operating on an expectation pattern. My instructors always taught me that you don't expect anything but you accept what the instruments tell you. Once you start to expect you run the risk of deviating from how things are and getting into a mess. Of course this may be different in military aviation but this is what I learned. Knowing what is often a vital factor and could be said to have more importance than why. The aircraft is climbing too quickly therefore put the nose down. Understanding why it is climbing can come late I would think.
I would agree with you about speculation but here the evidence points to human factors and crew non performance in such a way that the input device was peripheral and would have remained so no matter what. It does make one wonder how these poor people ever got onto an aircraft flight deck. Given, for example, that there seems to be no attempt to diagnose the initial issue in accordance with SOPs how would the input device have made any difference? In my opinion the breakdown in everything related to flight management and procedure was so complete it would overwhelm any system. That is why a discussion of whether a yoke would have helped is futile.