[0] https://avherald.com/h?article=52f5748f&opt=0

The timing and manner of the break make a lot more intuitive sense when you consider that the engine is essentially a massive gyroscope. As the plane starts to rotate, the spinning engine resists changes to the direction of its spin axis, putting load on the cowling. When the cowling and mount fail, that angular momentum helps fling the engine toward the fuselage.

The referenced AA Flight 191 is shockingly similar. It makes me wonder if aviation really is back sliding into a dangerous place.

Dropping an engine entirely is a similar situation to a failure - with the benefit that you now have a substantially lighter if imbalanced aircraft.

Should this plane have been able to fly by design even with an engine fallen off?

But beyond figuring out why the engine mount failed, I am very interested in what caused the actual crash. "Just" losing thrust in a single engine is usually not enough to cause a crash, the remaining engine(s) have enough margin to get the plane airborne. Of course this was a major structural failure and might have caused additional damage.

EDIT: It seems there was damage to the engine in the tail, even though this was not specified in the preliminary report, likely because it has not been sufficiently confirmed yet.