That part is a surprise to me - out of hundreds of flights in and out of EWR, I would say that I've taken off and landed on the 22 runways about 75% of the time.

One thing that contributes to this is that this is the "default" option if there is little or no wind, as it increases the capacity of the airport, in terms of of takeoffs and landings per hour, quite significantly. Or so I was told a few years ago by an EWR ATCO