also: joker linebacker · the joker
A program-specific name for a hybrid player, most often a linebacker-safety who does a bit of everything. What it means varies so much between programs that the variation is the entry.
2 meanings, all below. Jump to the one you heard.
Most commonly a defensive position name for a hybrid: a player too small or too fast to be a conventional linebacker and too physical or too near the box to be a conventional safety. Programs invent a name for him because the standard position names do not fit, and joker is one of the names they invent.
The role is usually built around the specific kid rather than the other way round, which is why two programs' jokers can have almost nothing in common.
hybrid, star, dollar, rovernickel, apex, overhangThe genuinely useful content of this entry is that the word has no fixed meaning. Joker, rover, star, dollar, bandit and a dozen others are program vocabulary for hybrid roles, and hearing one tells you a defense has a player who does not fit the standard names, not what he does.
The right response to hearing it is to ask, which is worth saying plainly because a new coach's instinct is to assume he is the only one who does not know.
The owner surfaced this one from memory with the note that it is a linebacker and that it varies wildly by program, and that variation is what got it written rather than the definition.