2019 Detroit Lions Awards: Pride of Detroit Moment of the Year

A little self-love is a healthy thing. I’m more the self-deprecating type, but I also don’t have an issue giving myself a pat on the back every now and then. There’s a fine line between confident and cocky, and I like to think I walk that line pretty well.

2019 was a bad year for the Detroit Lions, but it was a pretty awesome one for Pride of Detroit. We continue to expand our coverage into new areas and do things that not many other sports blogs do. We’ve brought our Twitch page to new heights, we’ve done some out-of-the-box coverage, and I like to think we’ve still maintained an honorable level of objectivity and credibility throughout it all.

And, of course, I believe we have the best community of fans right here at Pride of Detroit. There aren’t a lot of places on the internet that have a great set of commenters, but I truly believe this is a beacon of hope amongst the internet swamps.

So here are the nominees for Pride of Detroit Moment of the Year:

Fortnite with Graham Glasgow

A large majority of athletes are also gamers. So when we launched our Twitch page, we were always hoping to catch that side of the players. Lions center/guard Graham Glasgow noted on Twitter that he played Fortnite and even asked if any Lions fans wanted to play with him. We shot our shot, and then it happened.

Oh, and Graham is hella good at the game, too.

Mike Payton explores mental health in the NFL

Part of the thing that makes the Pride of Detroit team so special is that they all have such a variety of interests. Whether it’s video games, political talk, or psychology, we all have various backgrounds.

Thankfully, the SB Nation platform often allows us to explore those things to give our coverage a more unique feeling.

And that’s exactly what Mike Payton sought out last year when he dropped a three-part series on the status of mental health in the NFL. Mike interviewed several players, got in touch with the NFLPA and did almost a year’s worth of research before this piece came together.

He told a wonderful story about the lives of Eli Harold, Ricky Jean Francois and Eric Hipple that you should read if you haven’t yet.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Name Bracket hacking fiasco

The Detroit Lions Name Bracket has become a fun yearly tradition in which we attempt to decide on the player with the best name. Past winners include Ezekiel Ansah, Jace Billingsley and Storm Norton. As the tournament has gone on, things have gotten wackier and wackier. One year, the entire city of Winnemucca, Nevada came down and willed Jace Billingsley to a championship.

This year, things went particularly off the rails, as a select few figured out a way to hack our polls, giving us results like this:

Some people were legitimately mad about it. Others thought it was part of the fun. In the end, Amani Oruwariye walked away with a well-deserved title.

Farewell, Chris

The turn from 2019 to 2020 was a bittersweet one for Pride of Detroit fans. While we were all glad to put the 2019 season behind us, we, unfortunately had to say goodbye to one of our own.

Chris Perfett (you may have known him as Chris Lemieux) was essentially forced off our staff. It’s a little complicated, but new California labor laws came into effect on January 1, 2020, and those laws put limits on the amount of content a contracted worker can publish. The idea is to make sure companies don’t overwork contracted employees and, instead, encourages more full-time employment.

Unfortunately, SB Nation decided its new policy would be to end contracted work completely with employees from the state of California. You can read more about their decision here.

Anyways, you can listen to the last episode of the PODcast with our Adequate Host right here: