Advocates of baptismal regeneration often frame discussions of the subject with a small handful of Biblical passages that allegedly teach the doctrine. Supposedly, we should judge the issue primarily or solely on the basis of passages that discuss baptism.
Imagine an advocate of justification through foot washing telling us that we should do the same with foot washing. Judge the doctrine by John 13:3-17 and 1 Timothy 5:9-10, perhaps adding the same ridiculous appeals to passages about water, washing, and such that advocates of baptismal regeneration abuse in favor of their doctrine (John 3:5, Titus 3:5, etc.). They could argue that foot washing is a sacrament rather than a work and so on.
Though a passage like John 13:8 could be taken as a reference to how foot washing is a means of justification, the disadvantages of taking such a view far outweigh the advantages. There are dozens of passages that mention faith without mentioning foot washing, passages that are far more efficiently explained without assuming that foot washing is being included without being mentioned. There's a double-digit number of New Testament passages that refer to people being justified apart from foot washing, including in contexts that are described as normal rather than exceptional, whereas there isn't a single one that refers to somebody being justified at the time of foot washing. Justification through foot washing seems to violate many Biblical principles (the exclusion of works from the means of justification, the immediacy of access we have to the means of justification, the chronological immediacy of justification, the setting of justification, etc.). For more about the problems with justification through foot washing, see my post here discussing more than a dozen problems with baptismal regeneration.
If justification were obtained through baptism or foot washing, it's not as though those two things would be all that would be relevant. If baptism (or foot washing) is accompanied by faith, then passages about faith are relevant as well. If baptism supposedly is the means of receiving things like regeneration, forgiveness of sins, the Holy Spirit, and eternal life, then passages about those are relevant. And when you take all of the relevant passages into account, not just the ones about baptism in particular (or foot washing in particular), the best way to explain the evidence as a whole is justification through faith alone, without baptism (or foot washing) being involved.
If justification actually were obtained by something like baptism or foot washing, it would be unlikely that so few passages would allegedly refer to that means of justification. And as small as the number of passages is that advocates of baptismal regeneration cite, the number is even smaller if you remove the absurd appeals to passages that mention water, washing, and such with no good evidence that baptism is actually in view. In John 3, for example, the reference to water is followed shortly after by a reference to wind, which nobody takes as a reference to physical wind. Jesus is clearly appealing to Ezekiel 36-37, and the water there clearly isn't baptism. That's why Jesus goes on in his discussion with Nicodemus to refer to faith a few times without mentioning baptism at all. See here for a further discussion of these issues. See here on Titus 3:5. For a discussion of the language of water, cleansing, and such more broadly, see here. Once you remove the passages people are falsely reading baptism into, the material on which baptismal regeneration is being based is even smaller, and the smallness of that alleged evidence is a significant problem for the doctrine. How much evidence we should expect for something varies, depending on a variety of factors involved. Given factors like how often justification and related concepts are discussed in scripture and how important it would be to explain to people that baptism is part of the process if it is involved, the smallness of the alleged references to baptismal regeneration makes more sense under the doctrine's falsity than under its truthfulness.
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