Michael Boley was posing as a reporter in front of Keith Bulluck’s locker Tuesday. When he got a chance to speak, Boley asked a question on a topic he and Bulluck were actually discussing recently.

“So, Keith, tell me about this whole strong-side, weak-side reversal thing,” Boley began. “It’s kind of got me thrown off a bit.”

“Oh man,” Bulluck replied. “In Tennessee, I played the weak side and now they call it the strong side here. It’s just totally different because I was always on the weak side and now I come here, it’s the strong side and it’s called SAM, before it was called WILL and you played the WILL but now you’re on the strong side, now I’m on the weak side which is the SAM…”

After a pause, Bulluck added, “Yeah, you got it,” and walked off to a bunch of confused laughs.

We’ve got it? Not really.

The Giants’ new defensive coordinator Perry Fewell has made a seemingly simple switch to the terminology in his defense by dubbing his strong-side linebacker “WILL” (the term usually reserved for the weak-side linebacker) and calling his weak-side linebacker “SAM” (the traditional word for the strong-side linebacker). But that adjustment has actually made things a bit more complex for those covering the team on a daily basis.

Well, I don’t want to speak for others, so I’ll just say I was lost at first when players would talk about one linebacker spot while I was thinking about the other. So in a quest to gain more knowledge on the subject, I started asking questions like a real reporter actually would.

What did I come up with? Well, players telling me Fewell’s system is “unique,” “different” and, according to Boley, “kind of backwards.”

“There are some guys who do it that way,” Fewell said. “We’re a little different in that sense, yes. … The way we teach and the way we do things is really based on the technique of what the guy in front of them is playing, so we try to cater to the technique of the defensive linemen to complement the linebacker who is playing behind them.”

Well, that didn’t help much. But the players were a big help.

Basically, they told me Boley is now the strong-side linebacker. Again, that’s the “weak side,” according to Fewell’s terminology. Last season, Boley was the weak-side linebacker in a traditional defense, meaning he lined up away from the tight end. This year, he’s lined up over the tight end, whom he’ll be covering in man-to-man schemes.

Now, this is important: this is a return to the position Boley played for his first three seasons with the Falcons, when he was considered a traditional strong-side linebacker.

Boley is probably the Giants’ best cover linebacker. (If you don’t believe me, see the Chiefs game from last year. That’s what he can do when healthy.) So it makes sense for him to cover the tight end, especially for a team in a division that has playmakers at that position.

“That kind of works out,” Boley said of covering the tight ends before channeling his inner Jerry Maguire by saying, “That’s kind of a help-me-help-you kind of thing.”

According to Gerris Wilkinson, who has been playing all over the place the past couple of months, the drops into zone coverage are the same for the “weak-side” linebacker as they were for the weak side linebacker in the schemes Bill Sheridan and Steve Spagnuolo ran. The difference, Wilkinson and Boley said, is in the running game.

Whereas Boley was used to seeing an open “B” gap (between the guard and tackle) as a weak-side linebacker under Sheridan, he’s now responsible for filling either the open “A” gap (between guard and center) or the “C” gap (between tackle and tight end), depending on the call and the alignment of the defensive front.

The difference in action, according to Boley, is a lot of running plays will now go away from him, as a lot of offenses like to attack the “bubble” of the open “B” gap on the “open” side of offense (away from the tight end). Last year, Boley saw plenty of “downhill” runs in the form of a pulling guard or fullback coming at him. This year, those plays will be run away from him.

“It frees me up to run and hit,” Boley said, adding: “I like action.”

All of this means Clint Sintim and Bulluck will now have the downhill action run their way.

Now, according to Boley, Bulluck told him he played the “weak side” in Tennessee but it was like the Giants’ defense in that he played toward the tight end. I didn’t have a chance to ask Bulluck about that Tuesday, but Boley said the two were talking this week about the irony in Bulluck’s playing in two defenses that flipped the terminology. Now, he’s a traditional weak-side linebacker playing in a spot the team calls the “strong side.”

“That’s just what they call it,” Boley said. “We could line (Jonathan) Goff up in the middle and say he’s the SAM. It’s whatever you call it. Like Perry said, it’s unique. It’s not something every team does.”

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One other thing involving the linebackers that’s not really anything unique, just a point of emphasis for Fewell and LB coach Jim Herrmann is the creation of a “wall” at the line of scrimmage. That means they want their linebackers to play downhill and get to the same level as the defensive linemen if possible.

Bryan Kehl told me it’s something he’s working on right now. He wants to see himself on film “attacking the line of scrimmage” and getting in-line with the defensive line “so there’s not two levels for (the running back) to crease us.”

Coach Tom Coughlin said Sintim “attacked the line of scrimmage the other night” against the Steelers. Now you know what that means. And now you can watch for it in the games. If you see hesitant linebackers getting stuck at the second level, you know they’re not doing what Fewell and Herrmann want them to do.