I run a dynamic website on nextjs static export - landingpages and docs are fully static, login and user dashboard use REST calls to a non-nextjs backend. Blazing fast, no nodejs or SSR in production.
Keeping an unnecessary dependency for legacy reasons is never a good move. Be bold and delete things. Your software will be better for it.
But yes, another static site blog generator would also work.
Not just as the dev delivering the solution, but also library and package authors.
Ran into lots of issues around Next 12, Next 13 was very buggy, moved to Astro and never looked back.
As someone who's ran a blog for 25 years it's surprising I never knew these things were necessary until now.
Because "heavyweight SPA for a static blog" isn't exactly a rare problem.