The Green Bay Packers have their new special teams coordinator: former New England Patriots ST coordinator Cam Achord.
Achord, who was assistant special teams coordinator for the Super Bowl-winning 2018 Patriots team, spent the last two seasons as the assistant coordinator for the New York Giants. Now, the young, energetic coach will replace Rich Bisaccia in Green Bay.
Achord has his work cut out for him as he takes the NFL-equivalent of the Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher job.
Green Bay has a long history of special teams disasters at all levels, and Achord now has the often thankless job of trying to defy that history.
It’ll be a long while before any Packers fan can comfortably relax regarding special teams. Still, Achord’s history brings some immediate points of interest to Green Bay. Achord’s strong history of developing returners and postseason success could show immediate results.
Overall, Achord has a mixed history of success on the roller coaster that is special teams.
For the 2020 season, Achord took over as New England’s special teams coordinator and immediately fielded the NFL’s best ST unit, topping Rick Gosselin’s annual list.
No king rules forever, and Achord’s group plummeted in 2021, landing at 18th on that year’s Goesselin rankings. The group bounced upward in 2022, finishing 16th, before landing at 13th in 2023.
Jarod Mayo didn’t retain Cam Achord when he replaced Bill Belichick in 2024.
That downward trend isn’t exactly inspiring. Still, even at its worst, Achord’s units were average to slightly below average. That would be cause for celebration in Green Bay after scrapping along the bottom of these rankings for years.
Special teams is the most volatile phase of the game, thanks to roster-building and practice time constraints. However, Achord has had consistent success with his returners.
Achord coached two punt All-Pro returners with New England: Gunner Olszewski in 2020 and Marcus Jones in 2022. Both players recorded punt-return touchdowns during their respective seasons, a feat that has eluded Green Bay since 2014.
The Patriots also were third in kickoff return yards in 2023, and in each of his two seasons as an assistant coordinator with the Giants, his team scored a kick return touchdown.
The 2025 Giants broke their 60-year-plus single-season franchise record with kick return 1,942 yards, averaging 27.7 yards per return (fifth in the league).
Overall, the Giants finished ninth on Bill Huber’s 2025 special teams rankings. A strong return game stands out, but New York also limited opponent kickoff returns effectively, something Green Bay historically cares about.
New York’s most concerning ranking was their punt yards, which won’t be a problem with the Packers thanks to Daniel Whelan coming off a career year.
With Achord, the Packers have a coordinator who is good at kickoff coverage, which the team cares about, but who also elevates returners — one of their consistently weakest areas.
If nothing else, Achord should be able to get some juice from the historically lagging return game, especially if his player input is taken seriously by Matt LaFleur and Brian Gutekunst.
Whether it’s putting Keisean Nixon back on kick returns, bringing in a free-agent returner, or drafting a player with eyes toward the return game, Achord is well-equipped to come up with a plan to get immediate better results than we’ve seen the past few seasons.
Achord also brings postseason experience to the role. The Packers aren’t shy about the occasional special teams disaster in the regular season, but it’s the postseason where the biggest anti-highlights come alive. He was the assistant for a Super Bowl-winning team and didn’t embarrass himself in two Wild Card losses as the coordinator. That’s a huge gain for a unit that emulates the Three Stooges in the playoffs.
Just as LaFleur went for postseason experience with his new defensive coordinator, Jonathan Gannon, so too with special teams.
The hope is that Achord is a step in the right direction on the Sisyphean journey to improve on decades of special teams issues. While the organization needs to evaluate its overall approach toward building a special teams unit, Achord’s postseason experience and savviness in developing returners are areas where we can see immediate results.
