Sports that play more games do naturally cycle through rosters of players to let some rest, and prevent injury to optimize for healthy players. Look at basketball. It's not uncommon to see star players not play for a few games in a row. With so many games played, a few games isn't statistically as much as a single football game in the normal season. At 16 games for a normal season, a single football game makes a huge difference, and it can be hard to sit out an overworked player when that may make the difference between a win and a loss.
Comparing injury rates between sports without acknowledging the fundamental differences in the games and how physical they are is an incorrect way to view the problem.
Attempting to force teams to bench their best players for injury prevention / adding games to the schedule that will be played by the bench players will also lower the quality of pro games, and turn off even more fans to the NFL - which is already not doing great.
I wasn't comparing injury rates, I was comparing the willingness of a coach to sit out a player, and attributing some level of influence on that decision based on how many games are in a season (and thus how important every individual game is).
Additionally, nobody was talking about forcing coaches to bench players, we're talking about setting up the system such that coaches feel it's in the best interest of the team to occasionally bench (rest) players. Also, you don't send an entire team of lower quality players out at once, you cycle them through such that you're still always playing at a high level, just maybe not the peak possible (which you often aren't because of injuries anyway). There may be additional benefit to running more games when it comes to fan viewing and involvement, I'm not sure, but there's probably good data on it for many other sports.
