I guess a difference between people parachuting and rods from God, would be initial height/initial speed - and therefore the momentum built up before hitting the drag of the atmosphere.
From Geosynchronous orbit, an object would accelerate for 22,000 miles, and decelerate for about 15 when the air thickened. If it was initially fired from a rail gun, or travelling rapidly relative to the surface of the Earth in a high but not geosynchronous orbit, that could give it a few thousand miles per hour head start as well.
Apparently some meteorites that get through the atmosphere, can impact the surface at over 40,000 mph, like the estimation of the one that hit Gosses Bluff, Northern Territory, Australia:
Some points, and possibly an orbit mechanics primer:
1) If you assume its an orbiting system, you start with the velocity required to maintain orbit, with that velocity being parallel to the ground, not perpendicular. In LEO, that’s about 7 km/sec. In GEO its about 3 km/sec. Its very expensive propellant wise to change orbits in any large way. That’s why it takes BIG rockets to get into orbit in the first place. Once you are there, you are pretty much there because you couldn’t bring another BIG rocket of fuel with you. But you can make some orbit changes easier than others...
2) So to lower an orbit you thrust opposite direction of flight. This changes the orbit but you still have an orbit, only now the farside of the orbit will be lower (perigee) and if you go full orbit you will wind up back where you are now (apogee). If you get perigee low enough (~100 miles altitude from earth surface) you will get enough drag that the drag itself becomes a ‘thrust’ in the direction opposite flight and the orbit gets lowered more. Do this enough and you re-enter the atmosphere.
So your scenario is not the way things would or could physically happen given the limits of what we can put into orbit in the first place, and what we can afford.
3) Meteorites sometimes can become a whole new ball game. Fortunately most things in our solar system orbit the sun in the same general direction, and most meteorites will enter our atmosphere more are less travelling with the earth as it orbits the sun. The atmosphere slows or oblates them and most never even get to the ground. Now if that meteorite is coming from a direction opposite the Earths orbit (very rare apparently) then you have the Earth traveling about 27000 mph one way and a meteor going the other way, and if its big enough, yes, you get a big crater.
Achieving this type of destruction by a manmade rods from god system would be so expensive you might as well just nuke em’.