I'm not sure I follow, I believe the rims are both 7 inches wide, and 245 tire width is based on the tire, not the rim exactly. However, even between brands and tires, you'll find some variation in width between 245mm wide tires.
I was referencing diameter, because that will determine how much of the wheel well will fill up. Anything too big and you'll get rubbing on bumps, turns, or even just driving.
Now going too wide, may cause issues with fender rubbing. However I haven't seen any issue with going 20mm wider than stock sizes, especially since 235 width tires are stock on the 16 inch, so effectively going to 245 should make minimal difference on issues related to width.
Use
www.tiresize.com/calculator .
It'll help provide you with what you can do. In your case, a 16 inch tire, sized 245/75/16, is 30.5 inches in diameter. This would be 6.6% bigger than the stock 225/65/17 size. Make note that by increasing the diameter, you're speedometer is going to be off.
So we've established that based on your research in other threads, 245/75/16 fits on the escape without issues. That tells us that a tire and rim combination of 30.5 inches can fit on the Escape, providing it's on the stock rim.
Once you go aftermarket, you're changing rim widths, offsets, and backspacing, and thats other things you have to account for.
So using the link provided, let's take a 245 width, and see what brings up closest to 30.5" diameter on a 17 inch rim. Since you're rim is bigger, you need a smaller sidewall to maintain the same diameter. What I come up with is 245/70/17.
Definitely use the calculator posted above, as I find it really helps to visualize changes to rims and tires.