You can bounce on the atmo and by passing threw it multible times you can bleed away speed. Then you can fly your capsule like a wing for a bit losing even more speed.

That's why a Dragon 2 can land on Mars, but not on the Moon.

Check out the Scott Manley video on Youtube for lots of details, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zuFdVkVxpM.