The Carolina Panthers signed defensive back Rudy Ford on Wednesday, the NFL team announced.

A star at New Hope High School, Ford was a three-year starter in the Auburn secondary.

Ford joined the Panthers as Carolina waived defensive back Clayton Isbell, an undrafted rookie. Ford has played in 86 NFL regular-season games in seven seasons.

Ford had been an unrestricted free agent since March 13 after his most active NFL season on defense. In 2023 with the Green Bay Packers, Ford set career highs with nine starts, 71 tackles and six passes defended. He intercepted two passes to bring his total to six for the past three season.

A special-teams stalwart for most of his NFL career, Ford began getting much more secondary duty in 2021. He reached a career high with 626 defensive snaps in 2023, when he started the first seven games and played 100 percent of the defensive snaps in six of them.

A calf injury caused Ford to miss three of the Packers’ four November games. He started only twice in the second half of the season, playing every defensive snap in both those games, and missed the regular-season finale and two playoff games on injured reserve with a hamstring issue.

Ford was an all-state running back at New Hope in 2012, when he scored 27 touchdowns for the Indians.

Ford made the transition from running back to defensive back in his first season at Auburn, although he still ran for 79 yards and one touchdown on eight carries during his time with the Tigers.

Ford entered the NFL as a sixth-round selection of the Arizona Cardinals in the 2017 draft.