Blue Origin also has worse mass fraction on the booster stage than SpaceX does, which means they don't need to throttle down as much. If you look at New Shepard as a preview to New Glenn, there are a whole bunch of aerosurfaces which add dry mass, essentially ballast. New Glenn will add big side fins, which will help increase lift, drag, and provide more ballast.

Also, the New Glenn booster will have 7 engines. Not so different from Falcon 9's 9 engines per booster.

Overall, New Glenn is a good design (and will eventually have a reusable 2nd stage). If SpaceX stopped with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, New Glenn could easily give SpaceX a run for their money. Luckily, SpaceX won't stop with Falcon Heavy. BFR, once they finish getting Block 5 out the door in a couple months and crew Dragon flown sometime by around the end of the year, will be almost their sole engineering/development effort (Starlink being kind of a separate division).

Of course, Blue Origin also won't sit still with New Glenn. They'll make the upper stage reusable, then also add a hydrogen/oxygen kick stage for very high energy payloads, and then they'll be working on the New Armstrong monster.

SpaceX is super far ahead, but luckily Bezos is so rich that I expect both companies now to deliver on their equally grand visions.

The thing about these reusable boosters that’s surprising to me when I think about is; they really don’t need very many of them. Like 10 or 50?

Bingo. That allows them to switch over to BFR much faster and for much less money than an expendable launch provider.

Thrust isn't that much of an issue. Yes, Falcon 9 cannot hover. But they don't want it to anyway, as it's too wasteful on fuel.