Kris Wilson

His journey from the locker room, where he was a member of three division-winning teams, to the editing bay wasn't a straight line. Still, family, preparation guided it, and a vision that began even before his NFL career ended.

Wilson enrolled in law school, mapping out a stable future. But then tragedy struck. Wilson's brother was killed in a gun violence incident, a loss that cut deep, but clarified his purpose. Tomorrow wasn't promised. If he wanted to tell stories and chase his passions, now was the time.

"That made up my mind to go ahead, and if you're going to do something, do it because everything ain't promised. Tomorrow is not promised. So, you got to go ahead and do what you got to do, and I was like, I always can fall back on law."

In a family where his grandmother and aunt taught in Harrisburg classrooms and his mother balanced social work with teaching, Wilson had been raised to see education as a way forward. That foundation gave him direction in the middle of grief. It also pushed him in sports.

At J.P. McCaskey High School in Lancaster, Wilson excelled on both the football field and the basketball court, once squaring off against powerhouse Chester High and its star guard Jameer Nelson as the packed gym throbbed with anticipation. Nelson would later become the 2004 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Player of the Year at Saint Joseph's and go on to an NBA career.

The lessons of preparation and resilience he carried from those gyms and fields would echo throughout his career. The 2011 NFL lockout proved to be a blessing in disguise for Wilson, who took advantage of the pause to imagine life after football. While teammates debated training regimens, he sat with LSAT prep books.

By the time his playing days ended in 2012, Wilson already knew his next move — especially after receiving the life-changing call after practice with the Ravens, somewhere between the soothing sting of treatment and the monotony of the training room. A Los Angeles number flashed across his screen. Just like that, a dream became reality.

He moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in entertainment by enrolling in the UCLA School of Law. Upon earning his Juris Doctorate with a specialization in sports and entertainment, Wilson passed the California State Bar Exam but declined to practice as an attorney. Instead, he launched his own film company while learning to direct at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television.

While enrolled at UCLA TFT, Wilson's first student film, Mid City Blue, was nominated for a Student Academy Award in 2018 and won competitions at several other film festivals, including HBO Best Short Film at the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival. Before earning his Master of Fine Arts from UCLA in 2019, Wilson served as executive producer on the NFL Network docuseries Indivisible for its first season.

Law school at UCLA was rigorous, but Wilson found himself drawn away from statutes and contracts toward scripts and cameras. Movies had always been his first language, shared with cousins in late-night marathons and memorized lines. Storytelling felt less like a pivot than a return. Throughout his journey from UCLA Law to UCLA Film, Wilson leaned on The Trust (Powered by the NFLPA).

Those resources, paired with his ambitious work ethic, paved the way for him to land a job at the NFL Network. Producing Indivisible with Nate Boyer introduced him to the world of sports documentaries. From there, the road led him back east, to NFL Films. Like a master craftsman with a jeweler's eye for detail, Wilson has returned close to his roots, close to family, and right in the heart of where football and storytelling collide.

Each project is another rep, another chance to sharpen his craft. It's not so different from game week: envision the goal, prepare with intention, execute under pressure, then go back and critique. The discipline, focus, and resilience he honed on the field are now instrumental in his filmmaking career.

Wilson’s journey also carried him beyond borders. During his off-seasons, Wilson learned Portuguese and kept a home in Brazil, where his daughter — who is Afro-Brazilian — connects him even more deeply to the culture. That work came full circle recently when the NFL staged its second game in São Paulo on Sept. 5, 2025, featuring two of his former teams, the Chiefs and Chargers.

“So, I was able to participate and speak with the people,” Wilson said. “I spoke to a bunch of kids at a flag football camp and was part of a pep rally for the Chargers. It felt like reaping the benefits of the work I put in while I was playing.”

The uniform may be gone, but the playbook remains: vision, preparation, execution, evaluation, lessons Wilson now carries from the field to the editing bay.

Life, like the game, demands you keep showing up. For Wilson, that means telling inspirational stories that honor his brother’s memory, reflect the resilience of his educators’ family, and make his daughter proud.

This article was written by Rob Knox for The Trust. Knox is an award-winning professional, a member of the Lincoln (Pa.) Athletics Hall of Fame, and adjunct instructor at Temple University. In addition to having work published in SLAM magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Post, and Diverse Issues In Higher Education, Knox enjoyed a distinguished career as an athletics communicator for Lincoln, Kutztown, Coppin State, Towson, and UNC Greensboro. He also worked at ESPN and for the Delaware County Daily Times. Recently, Knox was honored by CSC with the Mary Jo Haverbeck Trailblazer Award and the NCAA with its Champion of Diversity award. Named an HBCU Legend by SI.com, Knox is a graduate of Lincoln University and a past president of the College Sports Communicators, formerly CoSIDA.