Docu-series chronicles Ryan Kalil’s return to football — as majority owner of Mexican team

The series premiere of “We Are Osos” opens at night with Ryan Kalil addressing a football team in an otherwise empty, 10,000-seat stadium in northeast Mexico.

It’s possible some of the Mexican players, or “locals,” don’t understand everything Kalil is saying. But everyone can pick up on the tone of his voice.

“I love football, man. It is the greatest game in the world,” Kalil says. “For a while I thought being a football player wasn’t enough, and I bought in a little bit to that idea that I’m more than an athlete. But as I got older I thought, to hell with that.

“I’m proud that this game has made me who I am, that it’s been such a huge part of who I am. Cause it’s hard. It’s f—— hard to play this game. It’s not for everyone. Not everyone can do what you guys do. So enjoy it. No matter what level you play at, enjoy it because it goes by fast.”

Kalil played the game at the highest level for 13 NFL seasons, including 12 with the Carolina Panthers as a team captain and All-Pro center. After retiring following the 2019 season, Kalil moved back to Los Angeles to run the film and television production company he started with former NBA star Blake Griffin a few years earlier. Their company, Mortal Media, produced the “White Men Can’t Jump” reboot, as well as the Apple TV+ sci-fi dramedy “Hello Tomorrow!” starring Billy Crudup.

Kalil also became a minority partner in Angel City FC, L.A.’s pro women’s soccer team in the NWSL. He enjoyed being part of a startup franchise, but wasn’t involved in the day-to-day operations. Plus, it wasn’t his sport.

“There was something I was missing about (football),” Kalil said during a recent Zoom interview. “Obviously, having all that knowledge and experience and not being able to do anything with it in Hollywood or really any place other than my kid’s youth football team.”

Then someone told Kalil about the Liga de Fútbol Americano Profesional (LFA), a seven-team league in Mexico, where Kalil’s paternal grandparents were from. When Kalil first brought up the idea of buying an LFA franchise to Griffin, the six-time NBA All-Star was confused.

“There’s a part in the doc where he first asked me what I thought about football, like owning a Mexican football team. And I was like, ‘Yeah, I love soccer,’” Griffin told The Athletic. “He explained about the LFA, about the league down there, and I was equally as excited, if not more.”

“We Are Osos” is an eight-part docuseries (airing on YouTube beginning at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday) that follows the Monterrey Osos through the 2025 season after Kalil and Griffin buy a majority stake in the team with a group of investors with serious NFL bona fides. There’s a Panthers thread connecting most of the other partners to Kalil, who convinced Christian McCaffrey, Luke Kuechly, Greg Olsen, Sam Darnold, Ron Rivera and George Kittle to get on board.

“We always b—- about how I could’ve done this better or done this better,” McCaffrey says in the first episode. “Well, now we actually have an opportunity to see if we were actually right.”

Mortal Media is producing the series with Supper Club, whose founder Jason Sterman has experience in the football space.

“One of the very first projects I ever worked on in the documentary format was ‘Hard Knocks’ with NFL Films, and that show taught me what happens when you put cameras inside a football organization and follow how people got there,” said Sterman, director and executive producer of “We Are Osos.” “This was a chance to do that somewhere nobody had ever done it.”

LFA rosters are comprised mostly of Mexican players, who work day jobs before heading to Monterrey’s stadium for practices that start as late as 9:30 or 10 p.m. Each team is also allowed to sign 16 “imports,” most of whom are U.S. players with experience in the CFL or other smaller leagues.

Jamoi Hodge, a TCU linebacker when the Horned Frogs played for the national championship in 2022, was invited to rookie minicamps by the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins. But that was as close as he came to the NFL.

“If someone would have talked about, I’ll bet you a million dollars five years ago you’ll be playing football in Mexico, I’d say I would have bet a million dollars. I would not think I would be down here playing,” Hodge says in the second installment. “I always dreamed of playing at the biggest level, playing in front of 100,000.”

LFA crowds are a fraction of that, although Osos CEO/general manager Jose Domene said the team’s attendance grew from around 3,000 fans a game to 8,500 after the new, star-powered ownership group arrived.

Kalil is hoping to tap into Mexico’s interest in American football. The country has 40 million NFL fans and is projected to have more than 3 million girls and boys participating in the NFL’s youth flag football program this year.

But Kalil said many Mexicans don’t know about the LFA, which plays an eight-game spring season.

“This is nothing other than a marketing problem. But there’s a huge upside because they love football. They understand the game. There’s a shorthand there. You don’t have to try to educate the audience,” he said.

“It’s one thing that there were fans down there, but the football is really good. … I was like, ‘Oh, this is good football,’” Kalil added. “And then the guys in the States that go down there to play is a whole other thing. And that’s why the doc is interesting.”

Shelton Eppler has been the Osos’ quarterback for five seasons, a tenure that predates Kalil’s involvement and the team’s rebranding from the Fundidores (a nod to Monterrey’s metal-smelting and industrial history, a la the Pittsburgh Steelers) to the Osos (Bears).

Eppler, who played at Northwestern (La.) State, came to Mexico solo his first four seasons. But this year, his wife Skylar, who played volleyball at Northwestern State, and the couple’s two young children accompanied him to Monterrey. Eppler, who works for his father-in-law’s insurance company, would work remotely during the day before heading to the stadium, which the Osos share with a college team.

Like the rest of his American-born teammates, Eppler — dubbed “El Pistolero” his first year in Monterrey — did not grow up dreaming of playing in Mexico.

“The end goal obviously is the NFL. But the percentage that get to the NFL is very low,” he said in a Zoom interview. “But why not play at a really high level elsewhere, and you get to travel Mexico in doing it?”

The first two episodes of “We Are Osos” provide an authentic look at the day-to-day challenges players and coaches face. The imports speak little Spanish, causing communication issues when they try to relay the defensive signal to their Mexican teammates.

Kalil visits the home of equipment manager Jose “Pepe” Landeros, whose small storage room is stuffed to the ceiling with stacks of shoulder pads, helmets and other supplies. In another scene, a tight end from the U.S. pulls a huge jug of store-bought water from the fridge and points out that a couple of imports got sick drinking tap water the previous season.

Viewers meet Eppler and running back Axel Montini, a Cancun native and No. 3 pick in the 2024 draft who agreed to play for Monterrey only after Domene found him a job with a bank. Another perk for Montini: Training with McCaffrey, the San Francisco 49ers running back who was the NFL’s Offensive Player of the Year in 2023.

Kittle, the 49ers tight end, is shown on the field with Osos players in what appears to be a tease for a future episode. Eppler spent time on Zoom with Darnold, while Osos coach Jorge “Pelon” Valdez has talked strategy with Kuechly, according to Kalil.

But Olsen said Kalil, who spends a couple of nights a week in Monterrey during the season, is the driving force behind everything.

“He works his ass off on it. It’s not something he just puts his name on and waits to see what happens. He’s living and breathing it every single day, both the nitty-gritty operations of roster management and dealing with coaches,” Olsen said. “And then also on a broader level with the league and the government. How do they expand to better cities? How do they get better ownership in those cities? It’s pretty fascinating.”

Kalil declined to disclose what he and his partners paid for the team. And while there are benefits to having current and former NFL stars backing the franchise, Kalil pointed to one drawback.

“When we first came into this, I did feel bad because the guys that had been there for a while, we kind of unfairly painted a big target on their back,” Kalil said. “Everywhere we were going, the guys were telling us, ‘We’re getting the best of these (opposing teams) that we’ve never felt before.’”

Crews have already shot Season 2, which will chronicle the 2026 season that wrapped up in June. Griffin, who played 13 NBA seasons, said watching Osos players continue to chase their dreams has taken him back to his roots.

“There’s a moment in the doc where one of our players says, ‘I wanna play this game for as long as I can.’ It’s just a reminder that it all goes away,” Griffin said. “We all started playing in our front yards, backyards, Little League, whatever it is. It gets to a point where you can be beaten down by sports, whether it’s losing or injuries or whatever. I think hearing these guys’ journeys … it’s really inspiring.”

“It’s a fascinating story,” Griffin added. “These guys deserve to have their story told. So we’ll do it as long as people are watching.”