That’s what 2 of mine do, the third doesn’t care about toys.
I agree with what the others have said, he is playing his own game, on his terms, nothing weird or unusual about that, border collies do make up their own entertainment.
We adopted a 3 year old who played fetch just like that, when we met him at his original home we were impressed how well he had trained the family to fetch for him. We don’t play fetch that way, so if he didn’t bring it back, we picked the ball up - 3 months later he played our version of fetch not his.