Most people reading sci-pop articles are by now hopefully used to sensationalism.
But I think in this case (which can be equally bad) the journalist only spoke to codensed matter physicists biased towards or having a stake in the superexchange explanation, normally one would at least incorporate one skeptical position (such as yours, even if it's a minority one) in yet unsettled cases rather than just letting decency speak out of the scientists themselves:
>But Yazdani and other researchers caution that there’s still a chance, however remote, that glue strength and ease of hopping move in lockstep for some other reason, and that the field is falling into the classic correlation-equals-causation trap. For Yazdani, the real way to prove a causal relationship will be to harness superexchange to engineer some flashy new superconductors.