Bermi, you have summed up the two choices and how people will assess Neale. Given the likely shortage of cheap rookies and need for cash, it is making more sense to drop Neale for Macrae/Fyfe/Kelly (personally Fyfe and Kelly miss too many games). On tonight's performance and how Neale looked and moved, I can see him going low 100's for half of his games until the byes.
The other potential opportunity is in ruck pricing and scoring. Watching games this weekend it seemed like there are less ruck contests per game and therefore less HTA and CP opportunities for rucks. Not clear yet, but if this is the case all rucks may be facing a 5-15 pt drop in averages. Spending 1.4M to take on a 20-30pt drop before the first ball is bounced doesn't make sense. Especially as inside/outside players and distributing backs seem to be the beneficiaries and likely to increase scoring. More for Kelly, Merrett, Walsh Daniel, Rich, etc.
Finally all the coaches are seeing a greater impact of the reduction in interchange on pace of game late in quarters. Likely those with elite endurance may benefit late in quarters and the game. Some more research required to figure out the players who will benefit.