Giants linebacker Bulluck goes from middle to outside

Most people foresaw Keith Bulluck making a push for a starting job around this time. But even he thought it would be at middle linebacker.

During training camp, when he was working as a second-string middle linebacker, Bulluck suggested that starter Jonathan Goff should be looking over his shoulder. Turns out there's another young linebacker who might need to see the old man coming up from behind.

For the last two days, Bulluck has been playing outside linebacker, the same spot he held down for a decade in Tennessee. It's also the spot that Clint Sintim had been penciled into as the starter since the 2009 season ended. Tuesday the two players shared first-team reps.

Suddenly there is competition at the position the Giants call their strong-side linebacker.

"I've never been one to worry about competition," Bulluck said.

Still, it came as a surprise when, on Monday morning, he was asked to move and make his old spot his new spot.

"I hadn't been thinking about it just because I was trying to get the middle linebacker position down," Bulluck said of the move. "It was told to me that middle linebacker is where they were looking [when he signed in July], but wherever they want to put the best 11 players on the field, if I'm one of the top 11 players, that would be great."

Bulluck has played only six preseason game snaps this summer, but he's made a bigger impact on those plays than Sintim has as the starter outside. It's been a quiet preseason for Sintim, the second-year player from Virginia who, during the spring, told people that he felt it would be his job to lose.

That hasn't happened yet. But clearly Bulluck is the first real threat to Sintim's hold on the position.

"I embrace it," Sintim said of the competition. "You have a guy who has been in that situation for so long. He's a great dude, a great asset, he helps me out every chance he gets. I just take what I can get from him."

Bulluck's move outside has been so effortless that he hasn't even flinched. When first told about the move, he said his reaction was a terse but confident: "All right." He doesn't even know where he'll be playing in Saturday's preseason game against the Ravens, never mind Sept. 12 when the Giants open the regular season.

"I don't know what my role is," he said. "I'm just here right now learning. Right now, I don't portray myself as a starter or anything. I'm the new kid learning the system."

But now he's doing it from a comfortable vantage point.

"I'm playing the same position that I've always played," he said.

Bulluck said it's just a matter of getting the terminology down. The biggest difference is that the Giants call him a strong-side linebacker, though in Tennessee and most other places, the linebacker who on the open side of the ball without the tight end is called the weak side. Bulluck tried to explain the change with Michael Boley, the team's other outside linebacker, but it quickly devolved into a "Who's on first?" routine.

The point is that Bulluck is where he was with the Titans, no matter what they call it. And there seems little doubt that when the Giants finally decide who the best 11 players are, Bulluck will be one of them, no matter what they call him.

"I'm kind of just going with the flow at this point," Bulluck said. "It's not bothering me either way. I came here with the anticipation of playing linebacker somewhere, and I hope that's still in the organization's interest."