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Here is a play.
Team A ball 1st and 10 at the 50. A44 takes a handoff and runs to the B-40 where he trips and his knee hits the ground. No whistle sounded and he gets up and runs another 10 yards to the B-30 and is leveled by the Safety and finally a whistle is blown. It was obvious that the runner was down and everyone knew, but the bullheaded safety remembered being taught to play til the whistle and even though he saw the runner was down he hit him anyway. By rule there are two fouls here. One for the dead ball delay of game by A44 and then the other for the dead ball late hit on the safety. We can go on and on about this teaching method but the bottom line is the players are taking a risk by using that method and when I am determining if a foul occurred I care less if the whistle is blown. That don't even come into the equation. A rare situation happened to me once. After I seen the play was dead I reached for my whistle and it wasn't there. Somehow it came unclipped. Luckily there wasn't any late hits but had there been I wouldn't have hesitated in flagging them.
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