I heard one pilot onm the news speak to it last night and he really nailed it. Its about measurement of energy when flying. And that practice is honed a lot when teaching dogfighting, but every pilot knows about it. What this pilot did that was so great was not run through the trained procedures that every pilot knows (throttles off, fire bottles on, etc.) or even land it softly tail-first in the water. But correctly see his options for landing, measure how much energy (momentum) he still had available to him and based on his aircraft, its weight, etc, make the correct decision to land where he did. That was the really great, special thing he did, IMO.