The Columbia was the heaviest shuttle reentry ever, and into a dense winter atmosphere. There’s steps that could have been taken to give them a chance to survive.
I would guess you are hinting at multiple atmospheric skips to slow down?
Interesting if that does work, maybe NASA was too risk-averse by then to try such an untried strategy? No one had ever done such a thing on purpose as far as I know, but a few Russions came down a good ways off from planned.