The first thing I would like to address is this statement:
An animal’s food response is not aggression. Aggression, by definition, is an act of impulsive and/or unpredictable violence. A snake that launches itself out of its tub when presented with food is not being impulsive nor is it being unpredictable, it is acting in accordance with a biological imperative that is the result of millions of years of evolution: When prey is present you hit hard and fast so that 1) the prey does not escape, and 2) they prey does not have a chance to inflict damage. Calling a perfectly normal and natural behaviour “aggressive” is feeding into the narrative that these animals are dangerous
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Now, to address your more specific question.
@snaxxs put it best here
Some animals will drop feed. Some animals will not. If you know your collection well enough to know which are which then you can feed accordingly.
I will add to this somewhat. With balls (and with most pythons and boas actually) you are again coming up against a biological imperative. These two genera have evolved to locate their prey by heat signatures, that is why they have heat sensing organs all over their faces. So placing an unheated item on the floor of their cage and simply eat it is expecting them to go against part of their evolutionary nature. Will some animals do it? Sure. But again, that is down to specific animals and should not be applied across the board for all of them.
I will also caveat that drop feeding in no way guarantees that an animal will not be incredibly food motivated. I have a blackhead python that I drop feed. But when it is feeding time you better believe that, when I open her cage, I have a hook in hand ready to deflect her because as soon as she smells food all she wants to do is eat and she will very literally bite/strike anything - my arm, the hook, herself, a branch, the trashcan, the bowl the food is in, the glass door of the cage… My Dumeril is the same way, she explodes out of her cage the moment the door is open enough for her head to fit. And she knows that moment, I can crack the door and nose tap her with the hook and she does not react, but as soon as it gets wide enough for me to get the F/T rat in, BOOM! I could not drop feed her even if I wanted to.