They will get a single rocket from that ideology and get stuck again in the loop later on with any big modification.
Falcon 9 now flies and lands with no crashes, especially comparing to expendable rockets. Of course a modification big enough will require changing control parameters, but that's a routine task for engineering.
Some day we'll have good enough models for air flows in all necessary modes and good enough computers to run those models; we aren't there yet. Testing is still required.