The way the center core changed course makes me think that it was pre programmed to avoid destroying OCISLY in case landing became impossible. Is this correct or just naive thinking?
I have read that the trajectory is intentionally off dead center of the drone ship, until the very last moments, so that in the event of early fuel exhaustion it is highly unlikely to hit the ship.
I haven't seen anything official about this failed landing, but I know in the past boosters have made last second course adjustments to water crash in order to save the drone ship/landing pad. I would provide a link, but Google is overwhelmed by this morning's crash and I can't pull up anything on previous incidents.
Edit: Walrus01 reminded me about how it's actually done.
Maybe, it'd be a fairly narrow window where they could consciously do that so most of the time we've just seen failed landings hit the pad but maybe this one was far enough out of bounds it could trigger behavior we haven't seen. They do intentionally come in off target which means an completely uncontrolled landing won't just crater into the ship. It's a pretty sturdy ship though and what we did see could have been it running out of the nitrogen for the cold gas thrusters that provide a lot of control close to landing.