Having had a look at the flight data plots, it is quite obvious Sully wanted to flare more.
However, the flight control laws having obviously not designed to accomodate an engine-out, flaps 2, gear-up water landing, they were not optimized for this case.
So it is very possible that direct law in this kind of context would allow for better landing than normal law - that is if the pilot is competent, of course.
I don't see how you would discredit Sully. What more should he have done ? A smoother landing ? Let us laugh.
But hey guess what, it so happens that the Habsheim pilots who crashed their airplane in a forest were in conf 2 as well ! So we can just take the alpha max value from the report : 17.5°
But alpha in our case (Sully) was about 14°, whereas full back stick order had been maintained for 2 seconds.
Just as a reminder, 14.5° is alpha prot (still from the report) and with stick neutral in alpha protection, alpha prot is targeted.
So basically, Sully had been pulling for 8 seconds but that did not give him any more than alpha prot. An AOA that he had at the beginning of his nose up order.
An aircraft not responding to your flare order, even if it is at a low speed, is obviously a problem.*
I will investigate this a bit more, later.
However, it should be noted that had the aircraft responded to the nose up order, it would have impacted the water with a higher pitch up angle and a lower vertical speed. Nobody can say for sure if the damages would have been worse or not.