The article you posted says exactly what I said - athletic aid can be combined with merit aid without counting toward the team total. If it is need based aid, it may count toward the team total, so same money/different pot, the total number of scholarships for the team doesn’t change.
There are very specific rules about what scholarships walk ons can take because they could be counted toward the team total.
From the article: “So while financial aid leveraging is causing larger awards to be chopped up into smaller grants, if the original awards were need-based than athletes might not be allowed to accept them since they would have pushed the team’s total equivalency over the limit. An athlete who is receiving any athletic scholarship might get more out of a $3,000 merit-based grant than a $12,000 need-based grant because the former can be combined with the athlete’s athletic scholarship at no penalty to the program.”