> Making an x86 instruction set processor that did on the fly analysis and conversion to a superscalar computation core sounded really hard, so VLIW was the safe "we'll do the superscalar decomposition at compilation time and run that".

The first superscalar x86 processor was the Pentium, which came out in checks notes 1993 (Wikipedia claims design work started in 1989, hit working simulation in 1990 and taped out in 1992). Intel didn't start work on Itanium until 1994, after Pentiums were already shipping to customers, and Itanium itself wouldn't ship until 2001.