It's been a while since I've used the extension (I use FF now) and I can't recall if you can set it to about:blank.
Disclaimer, I created https://aboutblank.page because in some browsers, about:blank was a default white page, and ignored the OS dark mode setting. My site respects the prefers-color-scheme setting, or you can set it to whatever color you want via a query string (see https://github.com/sphars/about-blank/#usage)
You can set "Home" to anything you want, but apparently Home isn't what happens when you open a new tab any more, it's what happens when you click the Home button.
It's pretty icky, and being stuck on this Windows work laptop is shortening the time I'll spend in this gig.
Also it's open source: https://github.com/jimschubert/newtab-redirect
The only way AFAIK to change the new tab is an extension