Don't mean to be rude, and it certainly seems like React was overkill for your project, but 6 months to generate a react site like you're describing seems like the problem might not have been react. Maybe it was engineering, or maybe it was management, but cranking out a react app that's "completely static or a simple form with less than 5 fields" is something one developer should be able to do in a day or two after reading a basic react tutorial (assuming there are design guidelines)...

Which is not to say I'm not sympathetic to bandwagoning having a negative impact on engineering teams. Just that in this case, I find it hard to believe that react specifically was the problem.