The article is talking about boring old queueing, like at the bank. The teller does not ask what kind of transaction you're looking for, even if they're optimized for check depositing. It's a straight up first come first serve scenario.

This type of queueing can smooth out demand spikes at the cost of latency. The author's point is naively adding a queue doesn't solve scaling problems. Although, as you point out, it may enable optimizations that are otherwise impossible.

NCQ actively interrogates the current list of work and optimizes delivery around what needs to be done. that's not the op's point.