Some people use a passphrase as an additional security measure to prevent theft in the event their hardware wallet is stolen...
Yes, passphrase has many advantages, just having it with passphrase will make the backup vulnerable to offline attacks like I once commented. But to be fair about this, you still get a good point.
If the OP's friend knows their passphrase is one of a dozen or so possibilities, the setup/reading the documentation for something like btcrecover may take longer than using iancoleman's tool.
If Iancoleman is used, the passphrase will only be guesses, and they can be wrong and never guess the passphrase right, but not bad to try it as an initial step, while btcrecover will be the last resort which can likely bruth force the password.