John,
I didn't say Mt. Hood was VRS, just that from the video it looked like it. Since I've never seen the accident report, I totally accept what you say...
Regarding a fly-off, I enthusiastically hope it is so. They always pay off in the long run, but because of the high upfront costs, they are now few and far between. In modern times we had UTTAS, AAH, A-X, ACF and then JSF (no I didn't forget ATF, that wasn't a flyoff-- 'nother story for a different time). I think we'd be well served by a flyoff between the two concepts, but I am not hopeful giving fiscal priorities.
There is an implication, I perceive, in your post that TRs can't autorotate to full landing. This is something that comes from the fact that the V-22 normally won't. That is true, because it wasn't required to. The requirement specified a survivable landing either through autorotation or through gliding to a short rolling landing. The V-22 team chose the latter. The larger the aircraft, the tougher an autorotation all the way gets to be to accomplish. A JetRanger does it nicely, the XV-15 was pretty good (although with only two they were not going to take it all the way), a CH-53, not so much. I suspect that if that is written in as a a pass/fail requirement, the V-680 will be able to do it, just like Sikorsky's JMR submission will.
I really hope we get a flyoff, but I'm not optimistic.