You put it ahead of the pylon so that even when the dolphin or bollard is destroyed, it redirects the ship to—at worst—a glancing blow with the pylon.

You don’t need to dissipate every joule of kinetic energy in the vessel. You just need to redirect it away from the pylon. That horizontal component can be done with bollards and dolphins sufficiently that even a relatively direct original angle should only damage the fenders. From what I see, there were zero such protections around this bridge.

Nothing can protect against a direct hit. But most hits aren’t direct, and those can be redirected without catastrophic pylon failure.