Watched that live... I think I said "Holy Sheet" among the group that looked up (I was typing an email) at the TV after another guy said "***".
Karl was right about the findings. You'll note the AB coming on about 1.8 seconds after the waveoff call. Also some leadership issues -- weather was BAD with thundershowers all around, we hadn't flown in a week (Brisbane port visit) and CAG thought his direction of "no nuggets" meant "no transition guys" (who, by the way, have a significantly higher mishap rate until they get 1000 hours in the new aircraft... I made it!) but the squadron interpreted it differently.
Also, Reagan had MANY lens / Approach system issues and over time (and seeing similar, though non-mishap passes) we discovered that the lens was mis-installed and one of the gyros would go bezerk on occasion, causing the touch down point to cycle from 350' down the deck to 100' AFT of the ship (target was 125' I think).
The pilot impacted the ship, and thought he had trapped. So, all you armchair guys that said he "saw he was (insert babble here) then...", go back to your hobby desks. He hit, the jet breaking up absorbed the impact and started to decel. He knew he was low but thought all was good until Boss (who had been his S-3 squadron CO) called "Eject Eject Eject" and the jet started to roll left. He was outside the envelope (about 30 degrees left wing down) but the seat worked like a champ. As a matter of fact, only about 3 people actually saw him eject (we never saw it on the live PLAT feed and thought he was a gonner). He had his boots on the flight deck about 8 mins after the mishap.
The OOD of the ship was a dumb*** and called away "man overboard", so rather than get the flight deck cleaned up pronto everyone had to muster. Duh. We ended up having the tanker drag a bunch of jets to Brisbane (with hot guns since they were supposed to go strafe a target in Oz but cancelled due to weather) for the night, the E-2 and most of the Rhino's had the gas to hang out and recover later.
Not a good night, and the jet sank in a couple thousand feet of water.
The pilot, a great dude, stood SDO for about 2 months so his bro's could concentrate on flying over Iraq, then he was sent back to the FRS to re-CQ and joined us at the end of the deployment. He's still flying and doing fine.