I'd say it's missing the FI part and the RE part of the FIRE strategy. Even if they did retire early with financial independence, it's never been their goal and they never actively worked toward it. The reason regular saving and regular humble living look a lot like FIRE saving and FIRE humble living is that an average person can only do so much to increase their net worth, so the possible variance between any two people is very limited.
But not actively. At best, they passively worked toward it. They never consciously took any steps to ensure they have FI or can ever RE. It just happened to them while they were working on other goals.
