Life after football: Joshua Kelley's path to filmmaking after the NFL

SINCE JOSHUA KELLEYwas 8 years old, his life was almost all about football.

He finally started living out his dream of playing in the NFL when the Los Angeles Chargers selected him in the fourth round of the 2020 draft out of UCLA. Through four seasons with the Chargers, Kelley was a rotational running back and special teams contributor, totaling 1,148 yards and two touchdowns.

When his rookie contract expired, Kelley joined the New York Giants for training camp then the Tennessee Titans for the 2024 season. As the season went on, however, he began to realize his priorities had changed. On team plane rides his mind was elsewhere, often in some alternate universe he'd created in his notebook. He began to dread team meetings, wanting to instead stay in his hotel room and write out the scenes of movies that cycled through his head.

"That's when I kind of knew it was kind of done for me," Kelley told ESPN. "When that Sunday morning, that jittery, feeling kind of was not there anymore."

Kelley hasn't officially retired from the NFL yet -- he jokes that he is keeping the door open just in case -- but as the 2026 campaign is set to kick off, he is transitioning into a new season of his own, as a filmmaker. Kelley, 28, wrote, directed and self-financed two short films this summer, one of which stars his former Chargers teammateKeelan Doss. Kelley's first film, "No Chaser,"premiered Aug. 29 on YouTube.

As Kelley's playing career reached its conclusion, he had something of an identity crisis, but through filmmaking he has found a new purpose, and he hopes to give that to other former players.

"For us as football players, just athletes in general, once we're done playing, it's scary," Kelley said. "I just wanted to show athletes that it's possible to pivot and do your thing."

A LARGE PART of Kelley's childhood was spent at the movie theater with his brother, Daniel, watching Spider-Man or other superhero films. When he wasn't at the theater, he was watching animated shows including "Naruto," "Dragon Ball Z" and "One Piece" and playing video games such as Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and The Legend of Zelda.

Kelley describes his hometown of Lancaster, California, as "the middle of nowhere," but these alternate realities allowed him to be anywhere he wanted to be.

"It just kind of worked my brain," he said. "It's like a muscle that I developed over time, and then that love for it just came out to creative writing."

But those creative muscles always took a back seat to football -- until Kelley didn't have football anymore.

After the 2023 NFL season, Kelley was excited about what was next. His rookie contract was ending, meaning he was entering free agency for the first time, and he had an opportunity to potentially choose where he'd land.

But Kelley went seven months without suiting up for an NFL team. At his home in Los Angeles, he felt a mix of embarrassment and confusion about his identity.

"It gets real. All of a sudden, the people that are blowing up your line every day to congratulate you after the game, they're not doing that anymore," he said.

"I was going through something, and I was like, 'Dang, who am I?'"

While he was waiting for a call from an NFL team, Kelley's screenwriting journey began in earnest. His life was different without having to be at mandatory team offseason programming, allowing him to spend more time with his wife, Mikaela, and his son, Elijah. (The Kelleys now have another son, Caleb, who was born in April.) Still, Kelley set aside a few hours each day to write.

"He would always be like, 'Look, I need to go in the room, be by myself and write,'" Mikaela said. "'During that time, I'd be like, 'Dude, what are you even working on?'"

Kelley was excited to return to the NFL in October 2024 when he signed with the Titans, and he remained in Tennessee throughout the rest of the season. He didn't see much playing time, appearing in just three games and getting one carry for 2 yards, but his writing journey continued in the background.

It was with Tennessee, on the team planes, in hotels and even in the locker room, where Kelley wrote an entire series about a football player going through a mental health crisis. Kelley wrote about 4,000 pages over the course of that year using his and friends' experiences to create the comedy-drama.

That exploratory script ended up getting Kelley his first taste of Hollywood.

After Kelley's agent, Bill Douglas at the entertainment and sports agency Paradigm, saw the script, he forwarded it to Dan Fogelman, Jess Rosenthal and Kevin Falls, the executive producers of an upcoming Hulu TV series, "The Land." The show is focused on a family involved in the Cleveland Browns organization, and they were looking for writers with professional football experience.

"We really liked his scenes that were off the football field," Falls told ESPN. "You really get the feeling of a young couple and everyone thinks, 'Oh, that's a glamorous life.' And many times it is, but you get to see all of it."

Kelley joined "The Land" as an entry-level staff writer in February 2025, shortly after the Titans' season ended. For the next five months, he helped shape key elements of the show. One character, Zeke, is modeled after Kelley's life. Kelley crafted most of Zeke's story, which includes the tension that comes with life outside of football: navigating media, marriage and personal life.

"Most writers at the lower levels get rewritten extensively, sometimes higher levels too, but Joshua contributed," Falls said. "Joshua will have the pride of ownership when he sees his episode and know, 'Hey, that's me. I wrote that.'"

That experience helped give Kelley something of a blueprint to what he'd do months later.

INSIDE THE CASA Rios Mexican restaurant, which sits in the shadows of SoFi Stadium where Kelley played for four years with the Chargers, he was trying to finish his second film, "Leverage," without needing an extra day -- and potentially spending thousands of more dollars.

And he was running out of time.

"How much time do you think this scene will take?" Elena Lozonschi, an assistant director, asked Kelley.

"About 15 minutes"

"Can you make it 10?"

"Sure."

Mikaela, who had been juggling producing and breastfeeding the then 3-month-old Caleb throughout the day, handed their baby to Alex Van Dyke, Kelley's former UCLA football teammate who is in the film, and began helping by grabbing cups for a kitchen scene. Kelley ran into the back of the restaurant to help with the setup for a scene.

In the end, Kelley got all the scenes done. The crisis was avoided, but the adrenaline rush from tense moments like that or from getting a scene to come to life exactly as he envisioned it is the closest he has gotten to the jitters he once felt from playing in the NFL.

"I'm still kind of chasing that through filmmaking a little bit, that adrenaline rush," he said. "I feel like through filmmaking, being on set, this sort of feels again like I'm back in another playing field."

On this playing field, Kelley has more control than he ever had as a player, when his success depended on the playcall, the quarterback and how the offensive line blocked.

After Kelley yelled "Action!" to begin a scene, he closely watched Doss perform a scene at a table counter, but he quickly yelled, "Cut!" Kelley realized Doss' chain wasn't positioned correctly to match a previous scene and gave other directives before heading into the next scene.

"I feel like that's why I gravitate towards this because I'm just like, I'm really in control of my destiny," he said. "I love this freedom."

Kelley experienced that freedom for the first time earlier this summer while shooting "No Chaser." Kelley's goal, he said, is to make the viewer feel like they've watched something they've never seen before.

In "Leverage," a dark comedy crime drama centered on a promising rapper, Doss is the lead actor. Bringing Kelley's vision to life meant, among other things, Doss having to lie on the bathroom floor at Casa Rios for a scene.

"He was like, 'KD, in about five or 10 years we're going to look back laughing at this,'" Doss said Kelley told him while he was on the floor. "It's just one of those things, like you have to start somewhere. And I'm just excited to see what this thing could do for us."

Both films were self-financed by Kelley after he was turned down for outside funding. Encouraged by Mikaela, Kelley spent the $15,000 to shoot "No Chaser" and $12,000 for Leverage. He's hopeful that the investment leads to outside funding for him to one day shoot a full-length feature film.

Whether that funding will ever come, Kelley isn't sure, but for now it doesn't seem to matter. He has found the excitement and joy he once thought might comeonly through football.

"I know I'm a good filmmaker. I know I'm a good director, good writer, good artist. It's just about getting better and better and better," he said. "In five years, I would love a Josh Kelley flick to be on your TV screen."br/]