yeah i suppose so, tape drift can be an issue for some instances on some machines. I haven't had much of an issue aligning in the DAW. I've nudged a few tracks her and there when mixing thats about all. OK fair enough, multitrack digitization is best but I've been fine with 1 at a time. My machines are very regularly serviced and i use 60 minute tapes, less prone to stretching....if that helps.
If it sounds good enough to you, then don't worry about it...but you're just not going to get rock steady transport from a cassette deck or cassette tape, especially as the songs get longer.
Sliding tracks can work up to a point, but if you want to preserve the exact track relationships that were on tape, how it sounded on tape...moving them one at a time without solid synchronization will never do that, and no amount of sliding or "stretching" in then DAW will make that relationship identical to what you had on the multitrack tape.
Granted, you can then mask some of that lost multitrack interaction from the tape...and/or you can accept the differences as good enough...but there's a reason people use synchronization. It maintains the relationship between tracks substantially better than "doing it by ear"...if that relationship is key to you.
I once transferred from tape to DAW, and made some very minute track adjustments to correct some timing issues I heard from a couple of the players.
I'm talking really minor stuff. The next day, the drummer came over, and I played back the DAW tracks...and right away he said it sounded different.
Of course...when people never hear the original version...they won't know that you moved tracks around and all that...so it's your choice.
I like to preserve the tracks off the tape as they were...having gone to great lengths to implement a synchronization system into my tape/DAW rig.