Earlier quoted context omitted.
Starting from a circular Mars orbit rather than Hoffman transfer would put their initial entry speed closer to 7000mph. > Parachute can bleed off 80+% of that speed for little additional weight unlike wings which would need to survive supersonic retry heating making parachutes a no brainier. Sure, Parachutes make a lot of sense for a one way trip. But Parachutes are a consumable, one which would be really hard to man…
If you are sending stuff back up then parachutes are reusable, but heat shields are not. There might be an argument if you where landing thousands of rockets a day and had giant city's on mars. But, by that point you can just make more.
I notice that Spacex have designed their ablative heat shield to which can withstand hundreds of reentries to Earth without any replacement or refurbishment. Still technically a consumable, but I really doubt anyone is happy with re-packing and re-using the same reentry parachutes hundreds of times.
And that's reentries to Earth, where the entry velocity is 17,000mph and the atmosphere is 100 times thicker. Such a heatsheild can probably withstand thousands of Mars reentries at just 7000mph before replacement.