It appears the pilot's cognition had degraded so they could not mentally process that "blue is up and brown is down" and take the obvious action.
If so that is a more profound and basic issue than automation dependency. It involves human factors and psychology under stress. If they could not mentally process and act on the simple blue/brown PFD,
I wonder; is it really "human factors & psychology under stress"?
The better the basic training, and the more the recurrent practice, the less the stress when you are out of your comfort zone. If you have a strong inbuilt data base to call upon the more you can relax, analyse and react correctly when in an unexpected situation. I've been in aerobatic a/c & paragliders when it's all gone wobbly. The first thing was pause, then analyse then react. It was easy when you have oodles of air underneath you and knowledge to call upon. We've seen the airshow crashes where they did not have this luxury, but in the case of AF & QZ they did have such a luxury, and also most of the other stall crashes.
Sit on your hands was a basic theme drummed into me in my early days. It is also true on airliners & I drummed it into my students as well.
I still think that most SOP's emphasis is on keeping pilots well away from the edges of the envelope where these skills are required. In many ways I can agree with that idea. You do not train a taxi driver to handle a car like a rally driver, but you'd hope a professional limousine driver could handle a skid or drift without burying it in the hedge.
IMHO this lack of skill is not a fault of the new automatic FBW a/c, it is about not having a full understanding of how those automatics work and not having a full understanding of the true handling characteristics of the a/c, and not having consistent practice and recurrency training of both.