The Mars atmosphere is not conducive to aero-braking. In fact, it is the worst of both worlds: thick enough that you cannot use thrusters without them getting destroyed by air friction, and thin enough that at the end of a parachute descent you still have to rely on either thrusters, or have your landing vehicle turn itself into a literal bouncy castle.

It's no wonder NASA came up with the absolute craziest solution -- a wicked fast heat shield burn descent, followed by a wicked fast parachute descent, followed by an absurdly complicated and risky 'sky crane' procedure to shave off the rest of the velocity using thrusters.