Statistically, there doesn't really seem to be much of a disadvantage to playing a short week.
On the other hand, time zone changes (particularly west to east) IS a statistical disadvantage, even correcting for opponent. The majority (but not quite all) of the effect is kick-off time.
Interesting find by you about short weeks not being much of a disadvantage statistically. I would have thought there would be. But even if it isn't as meaningful as I thought statistically, from a wear and tear perspective on the players, short weeks suck. I was fortunate enough to be fairly close to Jim Mandich (not that much to brag about because Jim had a couple hundred good friends, everyone loved him) and I remember talking to him about short weeks once. He said that a typical scenario is that when you have a game on Sunday, Monday you essentially can't move. You are sore from head to toe and the best you can do is some stretching, working with the training staff, etc. Tuesday you still hurt like hell but can at least move a little more. By Friday if you are lucky you are sore, but with a handful of Advil you can at least practice at pretty close to full speed. You don't really start to feel ready for a full contact game again until the following Sunday when the routine starts over again. And he stressed that was for a player who wasn't injured during the game. That was just the regular recovery time for any player who had much contact in the game.
The time zone change disadvantage has been documented for a long time and it is funny that it seems like nothing that teams do to try to combat it seems to work. Flying out early, changing sleeping times, etc. None of it seems to do much to combat that disadvantage.
