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GREEN BAY, Wis. — Matt LaFleur is in his eighth season as Green Bay Packers head coach. He’s on his fourth special teams coordinator, though, after moving on from Shawn Mennenga and Maurice Drayton and having Rich Bisaccia step down this offseason.
Enter 39-year-old Cam Achord, formerly the New England Patriots’ special teams coordinator from 2020-2023 and the New York Giants’ assistant special teams coach the last two seasons.
Achord, the Mississippi native carrying a southern drawl, brings the juice. That’s normally a cliché, but Achord epitomizes it. He wears cleats to practice because former Patriots special teams ace Matthew Slater kept knocking him to the ground during gunner-release drills and Achord wanted better traction. They’ve played clips of Achord getting after it with Slater here in the Lambeau Field meeting rooms.
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Achord also went viral recently for his lengthy demonstration during a news conference of how to properly hold for rookie kicker Trey Smack’s field-goal attempts depending on the wind.
“That was the first one I’ve seen in a long time,” LaFleur said of Achord’s coaching clinic for reporters. “He’s juiced up about football and brings great energy for our guys.”
First-year Packers special teams coordinator Cam Achord was asked how Trey Smack likes his kicks to be held.
He then came off the podium and did this for almost two minutes.
Enjoy. pic.twitter.com/sD6yhBbZDB
— Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) August 5, 2026
To capture exactly what Achord brings to the Packers and how he goes about his day during practice as he tries to cure Green Bay’s chronic special teams illness, The Athletic watched Achord’s every move for almost two hours during Monday’s session. Here’s what I saw.
10:58 a.m.: Achord’s practice day begins with a sheet in hand, talking to longtime Packers trainer Bryan “Flea” Engel, now the vice president of player health and performance. They’re presumably going over which of his guys are dealing with aches and pains entering the final week of training camp and who he’ll have at his disposal. Achord meets with his two assistants, 36-year-old Corey Harkey, who played for the Rams from 2012-2016, and Jeff Koonz, who was a Packers defensive assistant last season and the West Virginia special teams coordinator before that.
Achord’s outfit for the day: black Nike cleats, low-cut black socks, green shorts, a white short-sleeve windbreaker-type top and a white visor with a green brim. Perfect attire for getting after it.
11:10: The horn sounds and Achord jumps into action. There are stretches throughout this two-hour practice in which he’s not doing much, but this isn’t one of them. It’s time for a punt drill and you can hear Achord’s voice over rap artist Quavo’s bars coming from the practice field speakers.
Achord gathers his primary punt coverage team, featuring the likes of linebacker Isaiah McDuffie, wide receiver Bo Melton, safety Kitan Oladapo and linebacker Nick Niemann. Achord is active throughout the drill, shouting instructions (we’re not allowed to directly quote people on the field), getting in an athletic stance like he’s about to return the punt and emphatically demonstrating how to approach certain blocks. Achord is in the huddle every play before retreating to the sideline. He then crouches down and, in sync with his return team, runs 30 yards from the 10- to the 40-yard line before coming to a balanced halt like he coaches his gunners to do.
“I was with Cam my rookie year when I was in New England, so Cam always brings juice,” running back and kick returner Pierre Strong Jr. said. “He gon’ make you work. He gon’ make you better, so I love Cam. He gon’ be hype every single day. It’s not fake energy. It’s him. That’s him. That’s who he been since I’ve known him.”
“He’s actually becoming one of my favorite coaches, just bringing that energy to the meeting room and to the field,” said wide receiver Skyy Moore, who’s likely to return kicks and punts come Week 1. “He’s just a ball of energy and the players feed off of that.”
11:22: Team drills start and Achord steps back from the action. He’s going over sheets, presumably littered with play calls for his units. He reconvenes with Harkey and Koonz, who bring over a turned-over yellow garbage can for a solid surface to write on. Nobody ever said being a special teams coach was glamorous. Achord squats slightly above the ground on this hot afternoon to give himself a rest while his specialists, punter Daniel Whelan, long snapper Cal Adomitis and Smack, work by themselves nearby.
11:42: Achord holds an iPad and general manager Brian Gutekunst joins him on the field. Gutekunst puts his arm around Achord’s far shoulder as they stand 50 yards behind the 11-on-11s taking place. He’s probably telling Achord to be thankful for the GM delivering him a seemingly competent kicker in Smack (at least that’s what it looks like so far after a couple of years of inconsistency at the position). Gutekunst and Achord will talk much more ahead of Sunday’s cutdown day, when some of those final spots will be determined by special teams ability. They talk for two minutes before Achord jogs to the other side of the field.
Cam Achord will be relying on rookie kicker Trey Smack to help turn around Green Bay’s special teams. (Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)
11:49: Standing behind the offense during a period in which Smack will kick live field goals, Achord drops a sheet of paper tucked into his shorts. He’s so locked into practice that it takes about 65 seconds to notice it’s gone. An equipment staff member picks it up, reads the sheet to see which coach it belongs to and returns it to Achord.
11:56: Smack drills a 60-yard field goal to finish one team period and LaFleur flashes a smile. Achord said Saturday that Smack, the sixth-rounder who’s gone 7-for-7 on field goals in two preseason games with makes from 51, 58 and 59 yards, only had two good games. He needs to stay consistent. Sure enough, Smack misses wide left from 40 while making two from 33 and 43. Achord stands behind Smack each time and, before one kick, rubs his belly with his other hand over his head as some sort of signal. I’ll try to figure out what that means.
11:58: Achord yells “KICKOFF RETURN” as his most animated period of practice begins. Last week, Achord sprinted almost the entire length of Melton’s kick return alongside one of the team’s fastest players. Achord said his own fastest 40-yard dash was 4.51 seconds going into his senior year at Belhaven College, a Division III school in Jackson, Miss.
“I told Bo I was gonna run about 22 (miles per hour) on that one,” Achord said. “Obviously, I didn’t get 22, but it’s good. I think for those guys, they like to compete, regardless if it’s me (or) another player.”
“I love Coach Cam,” Melton said. “He brings that juice every day and he told me right before that play, he said, ‘I’m running with your ass.’ So I was like, ‘Oh man!’ And he brings it every day … 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. He’s straightforward and he wants the best. That’s why I love him most.”
Watch Achord conduct a kickoff drill and it’s no surprise that former Patriots special teamer Justin Bethel once broke Achord’s nose in practice.
He gets into the mix. And Achord never walks. It’s more of an urgent pacing, a jog, a backpedal or a full-on run. Might as well make the most of those cleats.
He’s constantly moving between the sideline and the huddle, creeping up behind rookie edge rusher Dani Dennis-Sutton and whispering coaching points in his ear right before the snap like they’re sweet nothings. He dodges bodies when he insists on running into the chaos, which is probably why he broke his nose in New England. He compliments guys and pats them on the helmet when they do well and barks and shakes his head when they don’t. In this period, he emphasizes with Strong that it’s his job to make a guy miss up the left sideline and he’s irate at undrafted rookie running back Jaden Nixon about something he did on a kick return.
Achord bounces on his toes like an impatient little kid watching his guys work, stomps his right foot on the ground and vaults his right arm forward to demonstrate how someone should return a kick. He calls Melton onto the field as the 12th man while making animated movements to coach him up so he gets a closer look at what to do differently.
As another period begins, Achord pats Melton on the head and Melton pats his coach on the back.
“He’s the best, bro,” Melton said.
“I try to be the same person every day, whether that’s tackling a pad, headbutting a guy, whatever that may be, and I think it’s contagious a little bit. I really do,” Achord said. “But I think the most important thing is to be yourself and be genuine. I think guys and people see through that when you’re not yourself or you try to put on a mirage and like, ‘Hey!’ That’s just not me and I think the guys know that. They see the excitement. They also can see the other side at times, too, but it’s a healthy balance. I make sure the guys know when they do a good job. Also wanna make sure they know, ‘Hey, we gotta get this fixed’ at the same time, but I tell the guys to be themselves.”
Cam Achord is Matt LaFleur’s fourth special teams coordinator in eight seasons. (David Zalubowski / Associated Press)
12:10: Achord gets to rest after acting like a player for the last 12 minutes. He spits on the grass, tucks his play sheet into his waistband and takes off his visor while exposing his salt-and-pepper hair to the beating sun and wiping sweat off his head. With the bulk of his work at practice done for the day, Achord retreats to the back of the end zone with Koonz, squatting and scribbling something on paper.
12:36: After 25 minutes of shooting the stuff with Gutekunst, LaFleur’s chief of staff Darryl Franklin and Koonz, a period in which something Achord said made Gutekunst literally keel over in laughter, the double horn sounds to end practice. Achord stands outside the huddle with his arms crossed, but his work for the day isn’t done.
As players and coaches leave the field, Achord speaks with LaFleur before staying with a couple of interior blockers on his punt return team — running back Chris Brooks, linebacker Ty’Ron Hopper, McDuffie, Niemann and others. Achord is calmer now, his voice no longer bellowing over the music that has now been turned off, but he’s still giving instructions and acting like a player himself.
This time he’s an edge rusher for the punt team, getting in a two-point stance and throwing his body into the two-arm blocks of Hopper and McDuffie. He tries his hand at interior rushing and runs right into a double team while his visor falls off.
Achord finally dismisses those guys, but he stays after to watch Harkey run rookie undrafted wide receivers J. Michael Sturdivant and Chris Hilton Jr. through individual punt-coverage drills. Achord has put in a lot of work himself, so he hits the water cooler and sips from a small Gatorade-branded cup, fist-bumping both rookies who put in extra work.
He teases Harkey about his 36-year-old knees, to which Harkey says he needs some WD-40 for them as the two walk off the field and back across the street to Lambeau Field.
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