That could be plausible, however to my mind its really just the butterfly effect. What if one of those passengers had a lithium battery that got a thermal runaway on the taxi out and they returned to gate? What if that same thermal runaway happened during rotation and they burned through some wires/control systems before returning to field? I could probably think of hundreds of other variables based on 2 late passengers.
There are millions of variables on every single flight, many of which could drastically change the outcome of the flight. SMS data does a great job at targeting the major threats and weaknesses and 2 late connecting passengers probably never shows up on that dashboard. In this case of a 737 vs 152 midair, the first things that run across my mind are where was ATC, ADSB, TCAS RA, and visual see and avoid protocols in this circumstance.
Not to be a jerk but, why focus on this one specific variable of a hypothetical?