Then stop the play after the tip was caught.
No. Don't stop the play at all. He didn't do it on purpose. The whole world knows he screwed up most of all himself.
By stopping the clock in mid play it made no sense.
You got that right. He needed to wait for a dead ball.
With regard to timing errors:
a) After the mistake, such a mistake shall be corrected:
1) During the first dead ball and before the ball is touched inbounds or out of bounds by a player other than a thrower-in.
That absolutely is not why he stopped the clock.
He anticipated LJ stepping out. So he blew his whistle.
That's what I thought at first then saw a different video of it that changed my mind for several reasons.
1) He never gave the signal for a player out of bounds violation. He put his hand in the air to stop the clock but didn't do the second part of it which is to point direction.
2) When his hand went up to stop the clock, his fingers were separated and not together. It didn't look like a violation signal. These guys are not usually sloppy with mechanics.
3) After briefly looking at LJ and the ball heading out of bounds he quickly turned his gaze to the clock.
4) He immediately walked forward to speak to the lead official following his inadvertent whistle. What is there to talk about if it's just an epically bad out of bounds call? I guess he might have said to him; "What did you see?" and the lead ref would have probably replied; "I don't know. I'm the lead administering the in-bound. I have the baseline. You have the sideline and you blew your whistle. What do you got?"
Or my take, he might have said to him; "Red tipped the inbound pass, right?" The lead would reply; "Yes" then he would say; "The clock didn't start on time. We have to go fix it. Boy have I really screwed up."
I could be wrong.