Have you actually tried disabling 2FA? Because I just did. I followed the steps above then signed in to Google from a clean browser profile with password only. No problem. Then I connected to a VPN in a different country and signed in from another clean profile. Again, no problem.
If you have 2FA enabled, then yes, of course it will ask you for the second factor if you're doing something unusual.
But with 2FA disabled, logging in with just a password works fine.
