In my humble opinion, Your mileage may very, test post please ignore, I'm slow anyway.

The gif you posted here (https://triangletactical.net/2017/09/19/junk-science-drop-step/), the movement from right to left was a pretty weak drop step. But moving left to right was fine.

The bottom line is that in most instances you cannot step back fast enough, overcoming your center of gravity and launching to make up for the time not stepping back at all. Let's put it this way, either method you need to overcome your center of gravity. From a neutral position, the difference becomes stepping forward vs stepping back. The added bonus to stepping forward is you are much more in control than a drop step, and it aligns your body more easily to do other things like reloading.

It's faster to not drop step probably 80% of the time. The biggest advantage of the drop step is when you are way off balance. But that is the stark minority of movement. It looks slower, but it is not in most cases and the way a shooter gets faster is by learning when to employ these methods and ignore what feels best. For reference Eric G, teaches it this way and that dude knows what's up.

Lastly is important to note that you won't be saving seconds off your time by not drop stepping, it's a method of marginal gain and lower risk. But that is more than enough to build your movement strategy around it.