If we can match as a zero extend there's no need to flip the order to get an encoding benefit. As movzx is 3 bytes with independent source/dest registers. The shortest 'and' we could make is also 3 bytes unless we get lucky in the register allocator and its on AL/AX/EAX which have a 2 byte encoding.
This patch was more impressive before r322957 went in. It removed some of the same Ands that got deleted by that patch.