Thanks for sharing the link. The key I picked up on was he gave it more gas to get going in eco and less in Sport for the same feel. Driven for the same feel, the engine is doing nothing different between the two modes because it has to do the same work to accelerate equally, all else equal. Like the article said, the actual numbers when driving by feel were the same in eco and sport. I would gauge eco/normal/sport by using the same throttle input/amount, and that is where I believe eco would yield better numbers to whatever extent.
I was simply being “crafty” and using sport to squirt away from the stops better with the same throttle input as eco, then going by the info I read here that eco does lean out the fuel map slightly, and thus enjoy those gains once rolling along.