I don't think protecting Brock was ever a concern. He was literally added to the match for the specific purpose of winning the belt. And the reason is pretty clearly that WWE feel that if they can't have champion Roman on the marquee than they need to have champion Brock to make sure business doesn't suffer too much.
Whether that's valid or not, I am not in any position to say, but the numbers that I have seen do seem to indicate that Big E's reign hasn't been "best for business" (again, I'm going off limited information so correct me if I'm wrong). And I don't entirely blame Big E because it's not like they put him in a great position to be THAT guy, but you can't just sit by and watch business suffer at the same time.
