I mean yes, the statement is over the top. But from what I recall the FO in the right seat held full back side stick for a very large portion of the event. You can’t deny that if he did the same thing having a yoke jammed back into his stomach that the other pilot wouldn’t notice and most likely would have been able to stop that control input. Whether or not they could have recovered is unknown. What they did with the controls put them into such a deep stall that it is estimated the last altitude they could have recovered by going full nose down to break the stall and pull out of the resulting dive was ~13000 ft. In other words once they passed through 13k no matter what they did their fate was sealed and they were going to hit the water.