Yesterday (Saturday), I was officiating a Jr. High game. Home team (Team A for this situation) is winning 26-0 in the 3rd period with a couple of minutes left.
QB (A1) comes up to me and says, "We are going to take a knee." So (disregarding advice given here), I go to the defense and say, "He's taking a knee, stay off him." Well team A can't get things straigtened out so they take a timeout. They come back out to the playing field directly to the line of scrimmage and I remind the Defense to stay off the QB. You guessed it. QB doesn't take a knee and throws a pass into the endzone to score a 2 point try.
I now fully understand that it is not my job to protect the players from being hit and I will never tell the defense to stay off the QB. We will call this a lesson learned. I also recall this kind of thing has been discussed before, but I need a refresher. What would you do?
I blew the play dead before the pass was completed so we replayed the down under the I.W. rule because I blew it by telling the Defense NOT to play.
To those who said this was a bad idea, I aplogize for not listening.
