Am I ball chasing? Here's how to actually check
At some point someone has told you that you ball chase. A teammate typed it in chat after you both went for the same ball. A coach said it about a replay. Maybe you said it about yourself after a bad game. The problem is that the phrase gets used so often it stops meaning anything specific, so you nod along and keep doing exactly what you were doing.
Here is the part nobody tells you: you cannot feel ball chasing from inside a match. Every single decision to go for the ball feels correct in the moment, because in the moment you can only see the ball, not the shape of your team. The pattern only exists when you zoom out, which means the only way to actually check is to watch the replay back and count something specific. Not vibes. Numbers.
Check 1: touches per possession, counted for real
Pick five possessions from a replay, ones where your team had the ball for more than two seconds. For each one, count how many of your team's touches were yours versus your two teammates' combined.
If you are touching the ball more than both teammates put together on more than half your possessions, that is not aggression, that is you playing 1v3 against your own team. A healthy split in a three-touch possession looks closer to one touch each, not three from the same player.
Check 2: distance from the ball when it's not yours
This is the one that actually separates ball chasing from good offense. Watch ten seconds immediately after a teammate touches the ball. Where are you?
If you are inside a car length of the ball while a teammate is already challenging or already has it, you are not supporting, you are queueing. Good positioning after a teammate's touch means you are somewhere you'd need two or three seconds to reach the ball, not somewhere you'd need half a second. That gap is what lets you read the next play instead of just reacting to it.
Check 3: are you the second man, structurally
Rocket League has three jobs on a possession: the player on the ball, the player rotating to back them up, and the player holding the net. Ball chasing is usually what happens when a player refuses to ever be job two or three.
Watch five kickoff aftermaths and five midfield battles. Each time, ask who ended up as the covering player versus who ended up challenging. If it is almost never you covering, that is the tell, independent of whether any individual challenge you took was a good one.
Check 4: the double-commit count
This is the cleanest, single number to track, because it does not require judging whether a challenge was good. It just requires counting.
Watch a full game and tally every time you and a teammate go for the same ball at the same time, inside about a second of each other. Anything above two or three in a single game, at any rank, is a rotation breakdown, and it is almost always the same player doing the uninvited challenging. If that player is you more often than it is either teammate, you have your answer without needing to debate any single decision.
What this is actually telling you
None of these four checks are about whether you are mechanically good or bad at the game. A player who hits every shot and never misses a flick can still fail all four checks, and a player with rough mechanics can pass all four. Ball chasing is a positioning and decision habit, not a skill ceiling, which is also why it is fixable faster than mechanics are: it is one habit to notice, not a hundred hours of training pack reps.
The fix starts with the number, not with trying harder. Once you know which of the four checks you actually fail, the correction is specific: if it is check 2, practice standing still for a two-count after your teammate touches the ball before you move toward it. If it is check 4, the fix is simpler still, it is just not challenging the second time you see your teammate already committed. Vague advice to "trust your teammates" does not change behavior. A number you counted yourself does.