Meet Cam Achord: The Packers' secret special teams weapon

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- He wears cleats to practice even though he won't take a snap. He runs stride for stride with the kick returners, yet he doesn't have a ball in his hands. He takes a knee to demonstrate how kickers want the ball angled, but he's not a holder. He'll even throw himself -- nose first -- into a player even though he's not in pads.

He's Cam Achord, and he's here to change everything you ever thought about the Green Bay Packers' special teams.

The 39-year-old Mississippian is part your father's football coach with a hands-on, foul-mouthed approach, and part Gen Z analytics savant.

"He's one of a kind, there's no doubt about that," former New England Patriots special teams star Matthew Slater, who played for Achord from 2018 to 2023, told ESPN. "When you said that he's still running around out there with cleats on, I couldn't help but laugh to myself."

Not because Slater finds Achord funny. More a shake of the head because he still can't believe some of the things Achord does on the field.

"He wanted to make sure that we were prepared, even if that meant putting his body on the line," said Slater, a five-time All-Pro selection as a special-teamer. "I've seen Cam break a nose. I've seen him on the ground several times, but it's all in the name of ensuring that his players are ready to go. As a player, as a pro, you really have to appreciate that."

THE BROKEN NOSE story was largely unknown outside of the Patriots' inner circle before coach Matt LaFleur hired Achord in late February to replace Rich Bisaccia who unexpectedly resigned.

It happened in 2019, when Achord was a Patriots assistant special teams coach. One day in practice, Achord was putting Justin Bethel, Slater and the other gunners through a drill designed to help them beat a double team, otherwise known as a vice.

"I tell them, 'Quit pulling me like you're gonna pull a coach,'" Achord recalled earlier this year. "I was like, 'Pull me like you're gonna pull the freaking vice. Yank!'"

And yank they did.

"Ask Justin about the broken nose," Slater said. "See if he remembers that."

Said Bethel: "Was it me?"

According to both Achord and Slater, yes, it was.

Bethel did exactly what Achord said, and the next thing anyone knew the coach was face down on the turf.

"So after that, I started wearing cleats just for better grip," Achord said.

Those cleats helped Achord in an August training camp practice, when he was nearly able to keep up with Bo Melton on a long kick return.

"He told me right before that play. He said, 'I'm running with your ass,'" Melton said. "So I was like, 'Oh man!'

"He brings it every day. Like whatever you do, he going to get on your ass when you do great. He's going to be happy as hell. He's going to be jumping around when you do good. And he going to rip your ass when you're not doing so well. So he's a through-and-through coach."

ACHORD LOVES TO teach. Since his arrival in Green Bay, every one of his sessions with the media has been part press conference, part educational opportunity. Few coaches can match Achord's words-per-minute rate. Throw in the Mississippi native's thick southern accent, and it's sometimes hard to keep up.

Responding to a media question earlier this year about how kickers want the holder to position the ball, Achord came off the podium, got down on one knee and gave a two-minute demonstration unlike anything a coach has done before in the Lambeau Field media auditorium.

"You guys also got a coaching clinic I understand?" Packers coach Matt LaFleur said the next day. "That was the first one I've seen in a long time. He's juiced up about football and brings great energy for our guys."

Two days after the Packers' 39-22 season-opening loss to the Vikings -- a game in which Skyy Moore made the seemingly risky decision to catch two punts off the bounce, returning them for 12 and 5 yards -- Achord was asked about the fine line between aggressiveness and unnecessary risk.

"When the ball hits the ground on average in the NFL, it rolls around 14 yards," Achord said. "So we're saving potentially 14 yards if we're able to field the ball off the bounce."

The natural follow-up, of course, was how in the heck does Achord know the average is 14 yards?

"You just gotta take the time to watch the plays and study," Achord said, explaining how a couple of years ago he charted every punt that hit the ground for a several-year stretch.

"I don't mind watching 3,000 punts," he said almost sheepishly. "Honestly, it probably took me two days to watch them all."

This offseason, he wanted to know what a reasonable standard was for gunners on punt returns to beat double-teams. For that, he turned to Slater.

"I went back and watched all of Matt Slater's vice reps for the last six years when I coached him," Achord said. "Just to see, how much did he win? And that way it gives it to our guys in percentages and stuff. It was pretty high. But obviously he's probably a Hall of Famer -- should be a Hall of Famer. 

"But that's the standard we want, right? We want to have high standards. We want to live up to those standards. So to me you want to look at what the best of the best is and that's what you want to hold yourself to."

By the way, Slater beat those double-teams 80.2% of the time, according to Achord's study.

"He did everything that's humanly possible to make sure that his players are prepared," Bethel said of Achord. "But a lot of it goes to the type of players you have in the room. You can have all that information, but if you have guys who don't take advantage of it, it's kind of a waste.

"It starts with the head coach, and Bill [Belichick] was always adamant about having good special teams, and he would keep players for that reason."

Like Belichick, Achord isn't afraid to get on players. During training camp, Achord grew frustrated by repeated mistakes and went into a tirade where every other word out of his mouth was an F-bomb.

"He's actually becoming one of my favorite coaches, just bringing that energy to the meeting room and to the field," Moore said just before the start of the season. "He's just a ball of energy and the players feed off of that, so I like it."

THE PACKERS' SPECIAL teams have been so bad for so long, why should anyone get excited about another coach tasked to change the seemingly unchangeable? 

Every special teams coordinator the Packers have employed from 1999 through last season -- nine in total -- has either been fired (six of them), forced into retirement (two) or left under circumstances not fully explained (Bisaccia after last season).

Special teams blunders have cost the Packers at the worst possible times. To name a few:

• The 2014 NFC Championship Game loss against the Seahawks, who ran a fake field goal for a touchdown in the third quarter and recovered an onside kick in the final minutes (bye-bye special teams coordinator Shawn Slocum).
• The 2021 wild-card loss to the 49ers, who became the first team in 33 years to block both a punt and field goal in the same playoff game (and the end of Maurice Drayton's tenure as coordinator after one season).
• The 2023 three-point loss to the 49ers in the divisional round, when Anders Carlson missed a 41-yard field goal attempt in the fourth quarter in his only season with the Packers.
• Last season against the Bears, who recovered an onside kick and forced overtime in Week 16, then went on to win the game and the NFC North.
• The wild-card loss to the Bears last season, when kicker Brandon McManus missed two field goals and an extra point in what turned out to be Bisaccia's last game.

During Achord's four seasons (2020-23) as the Patriots' special teams coordinator, his units ranked first, third, 26th and 31st in ESPN's FPI rankings. After New England, Achord spent two seasons as the Giants' assistant special teams coach. Now, two games into his Packers' tenure, he will make his Lambeau Field debut in primetime Thursday against the Atlanta Falcons (8:15 p.m. ET, Prime Video).

The early returns on Achord have been promising. After Sunday's 20-17 overtime win over the Jets, LaFleur handed out two game balls. Both went to special-teamers: Moore, whose 63-yard punt return in the fourth quarter helped set up the game-tying field goal and Trey Smack, the rookie who made the game-winning kick and hasn't missed a field goal yet.

Not only did Moore have the 63-yard punt return, he also returned a kickoff 43 yards in the second quarter. Those two returns were longer than the Packers' longest punt return (20 yards) and their longest kickoff return (36 yards) all of last season.

While Slater wasn't fully aware of the scope of the Packers' special teams problems, he remembered the botched onside kick recovery in the 2014 NFC title game.

"They would have played us [in the Super Bowl]," Slater said.

Perhaps nothing will change and Achord, the fourth special teams coordinator in LaFleur's eight season as Packers coach, will be just another name on the long list of coaches who have come and gone.

But if you ask Slater, he thinks Achord gives the Packers a chance to reverse decades of special teams problems.

"It's hard to speculate on what's going to happen in the NFL," Slater added. "But I do think that his players will feel as prepared as they've ever been over the course of their careers. They'll have all the answers to the tests that they need. It'd be up to them to be able to go out on the field and execute it.

"If you're a Packers fan, but especially if you're a player, you're going to be excited about playing for Cam because he gives you his best and will do everything he can to ensure success."