the geometry is not quite right
So what you’re saying is, you’ve only tried it with bad ones therefore you know they’re all bad? What will you do if you ever ride a bad 700c bike, give up entirely?
The difference between a nominally 2 inch tyre on a 26 inch wheel (something light and fast and hybrid-appropriate like a Kojak) and a 28c tyre on a 700c rim is about 1.5%- so in terms of gearing, or in fact anything else, it’s smaller than the difference between a 52 and 53 tooth big ring. How is that so terribly slow?
And rolling resistance isn’t substantially higher with a fat tyre, but capability- dealing with bad surfaces, unsurfaced paths, etc- ie all that flexibility stuff which is what sets a hybrid apart from a flat barred roadie- is way better.