It's no secret that the Green Bay Packers and special teams haven't exactly gone well together. For nearly two decades now, the Packers' special teams units have routinely ranked at the bottom of the league.
This year, the team has yet again turned to a new face to fix the group, and while there's still a ways to go, his infectious energy might be just what the team needs.
Following another year in which the Packers special teams let the team down in a myriad of ways, they made yet another change. Rich Bisaccia, who served as the team's special teams coordinator as well as an assistant head coach to Matt LaFleur, stepped down in the offseason and went to the NCAA, where he serves as Clemson's special teams coordinator. In his place, the Packers hired Cam Achord to take on the role, and early reviews of the unit under his watch are very positive.
Cam Achord seems like the perfect fit to turn around Packers' special teams woes
On paper, Achord has an absolutely outstanding resume. He began his career at Southern Miss as a special teams graduate assistant, became an offensive graduate assistant, then moved to Southwest Mississippi CC, where he served in a number of positions over three years.
In 2018, he made the move to the NFL, being hired by Bill Belichick to serve as an assistant special teams coach for the New England Patriots. From 2020-23, he served as the Patriots' special teams coordinator before spending the last two years with the New York Giants as an assistant special teams coach. Achord's path to the NFL is an impressive one, especially his stay with the Patriots, which included a Super Bowl win and getting to work with a legendary coach.
Now Achord, 39, will turn his attention to the Packers. His presence around the team has certainly been noted. Achord went viral earlier this month for literally getting on his hands and knees to demonstrate how kickers like different ways for the ball to be held. However, it's his on-field energy that is leaving some players mighty impressed.
According to those in attendance, Achord has been a consistently loud, consistently high-energy coach on the field during training camp. He'll run down the field with players on a punt drill, get loud for good and bad plays, and perhaps most importantly, is extremely detail-oriented, something that will hopefully serve the Packers well.
"He's very detailed in meetings to where once we get on the field, you should know what you’ve got or where you should be," Packers wide receiver and return man Skyy Moore said (via Packers News). "Sometimes, for whatever reason, it might get confusing out there with the bullets flying, and he doesn't like it. It's always coming from a good place, though. You can tell that’s just his style of coaching, and at the end of the day, he gets a lot of good things out of players."
While the loud and boisterous nature is fun to watch and experience as a fan, what really matters is what happens on the field. Since 2016, the highest the Packers' special teams have graded out, according to Pro Football Focus, is 24th in 2019, an extremely low mark and one that has consistently affected the Packers in big moments.
Last year alone, the Packers lost several games due to not only poor field goal execution, but penalties on special teams plays.
For a team with as high aspirations as the Packers, it's simply inexcusable to have this poor of a special teams group. Achord is the latest in a long line of coordinators to step in and try to fix it. Whether he does or not remains unknown, but his style and energy is something the Packers haven't had in some time, and the team is hoping that it will translate onto the field.
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