The flat sequence for enforcing execution order is common, My guess is the compiler adds some flip flops to force the order at the expense of clock ticks.
I come at it the same way as you. Anything that can be in an SCTL will be. Get rid of the enable chain and save time and resource utilisation.
Gentleman thanks for chiming on the topic, makes sense to use SCTL and the compiled FPGA is a black box. Excellent contribution to question.