From the sounds of the CVR, he had no idea what was going on. His actions have been concluded as those based on startle factor, and not thinking it through. They were alert enough to be talking pretty much nonstop, even below 10k. This accident was somewhat related to fatigue, but not based on their schedule. Both were tired from their commutes and their sleep in the crew room, with the FO flying while clearly sick. Not that I blame her, she financially couldn't afford to call in sick.

Yes, and not just a redeye from SEA, but a Fedex redeye. That means an initial redeye from SEA to MEM, wait a couple of hours in which you pretty much can't sleep, and then board another plane for a redeye to EWR. There's no quality sleep here. The CA's story is only a little better, he didn't commute through the night. But in both cases, their commute choices (one through the night) and more importantly, their sleep choices (crew room) led to fatigue that night. Their original schedule that day had a EWR-ALB turn and the accident flight to BUF for the overnight. The ALB turn cancelled. The accident happened on their first actual leg, with duty time being very low. It would have been an entirely different story if this accident was leg #7 on a 13:45 hr duty day. Then the industry would have screamed schedule fatigue. But as it happened, the commute+sleep issues was more so the problem.