2020 Detroit Lions Awards: Pride of Detroit Moment of the Year

2020 was perilously close to a lost season in the NFL. With the pandemic raging, no one was sure if the league could truly manage to stay afloat for a full season. While there were certainly bumps along the way, the NFL did a commendable job, and we, thankfully, got a full season of football.

And while the Detroit Lions saw very little success on the field, it was a banner year for Pride of Detroit. We set all sorts of records for the site, expanded our community to weekly live shows on Twitch and YouTube, and had several successful charity events. In the end, I like to think we made a tough year—and a tough season—a little more tolerable and a lot more entertaining.

Here are our nominees for Pride of Detroit moment of the year.

Pride of Detroit’s Karaoke Drive with Lions RB coach Kyle Caskey

2020 was a year in which Pride of Detroit really expanded their coverage to both YouTube and Twitch for a live video experience. One benefit to that expansion was the ability to host live charity events, and back in August, we teamed up with former Detroit Lions running backs coach Kyle Caskey and his wife Kayla to raise money for their foundation to fund a school for underprivileged children in Detroit.

The night featured the Pride of Detroit staff going HAM on some karaoke, guest appearances from Ty Johnson and Nick Bawden, and even Kyle Caskey himself doing an acapella version of “Ice, Ice Baby.” And every time we hit specific goals, I humiliated myself in one way or another:

Most importantly, we raised over $8,000 for the Caskey Family Foundation in a single night, which provided the Detroit Lions academy with 12 Microsoft Surfaces to aid in virtual learning.

Jeremy channels “Macho Man” Randy Savage

In continuing with our theme of our live events, we held a similar charity karaoke event on New Year’s Eve to raise money for Feeding America, which funds food banks all around the country. To add an extra layer of fun to the event, each dollar donated could be used to vote on who I would cosplay as for the next PODcast: Ron Burgundy, Hulk Hogan, Macho Man Randy Savage or Austin Powers.

Over $4,000 later, this happened.

Kelly Rowe’s creates Detroit Lions Christmas Album (commercial)

It would be understandable if Lions fans weren’t feeling so festive this year, as 2020 sucked and the 2020 Detroit Lions sucked even harder. But Kelly Rowe did her best to keep up the Christmas spirit with this hilarious holiday album commercial.

Jeremy’s mustache gets a shout out from Duce Staley

As many do, I decided to grow out my mustache as part of “Movember.” Our live Twitch audience apparently learned to love it, and kept insisting I keep the mustache by purchasing subscriptions to our Twitch channel. So, begrudgingly, I kept it around for December... and January... and it still lives on my upper lip to this day.

And a couple weeks ago, it all paid off.

Even though this moment technically happened in February of 2021, we’ll slip it into the 2020 Pridies, because hopefully we will all forget about this moment by this time next year.

During a media Zoom call with some of the members of the Lions’ new coaching staff, assistant head coach/running backs coach Duce Staley finished his portion of the press conference with this unexpected moment.