EMIT, I believe the key was they had to respond to the T/R deployment immediately - and lacking the outside visual queues and making sense of the attitude display took a second or two that they didn't have.
The FADEC fault dump showed faults consistent with the aircraft breaking up ~10 seconds after the T/R deployed (and with going supersonic before that). It happened fast.
Disclaimer - I wasn't involved in the simulator testing itself, I'm simple relaying what I was told by those who were...