Answer is yes , you dont need appium .
https://chromedriver.chromium.org/getting-started/getting-started---android
Thanks for the wonderful question
You can run chrome in android device straight from selenium:
First make sure adb version is latest:
download latest from :
https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools
the adb will be inside the platform tool
Now make sure device detected
run:
adb devices
And make sure device shows in the list

make sure it is showing device and not unauthorized:
Now you can run below code:
python:
you can add experimental option (for any binding )
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_experimental_option('androidPackage', 'com.android.chrome')
driver = webdriver.Chrome('./chromedriver', options=options)
driver.get('https://google.com')
driver.quit()
You can see how to inspect from desktop here:
https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/remote-debugging#troubleshooting
https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/remote-debugging