On any given Sunday, great wide receiver Randall Cobb makes plays that make people look at each other like, “What just happened?” If you haven’t seen the Tennessee native play, you can watch dozens of videos on YouTube of him avoiding tacklers. But Sunday isn’t the only day of the week. Randall spends the rest of his time in a place that might be the opposite of a professional football field with a lot of stress.

Randall just finished building a new house in West University Place, a city in Houston, Texas. “It’s been amazing to have a place where our two young children can run around the yard and make memories,” he says. Randyll says of himself and his wife, lawyer Aiyssa Cobb, “We kept hearing about West U from our friends.” “When we finally saw the area and saw how close it was to coffee shops and restaurants on foot, we knew it was the right place for us.”

But the Cobbs bought their house in Houston during the COVID-19 outbreak. The young family was living in Los Angeles at the time, which made things even more difficult during the planning process. They naturally looked for help furnishing their home and talked to interior designer Brandon Fontenot and brothers Jonathan and Roxanne Wimmel of Wimmel Design and Construction. Brandon Fontenot says of the homes, “Even though neither of them is from California, their style fits with that part of the country.” That became the idea behind the style we came up with. Since they have kids, we had to keep that in mind. The coffee table had to be round, and the living room had to be free-form. It also had to look stylish.

Yes, it is very stylish. While making things look good isn’t the point of professional sports like football, it definitely is in interior design. “Roxanne and Jonathan really listened to our request that the space be both useful and nice to look at,” Aiyda says. “We wanted to do amazing things and find a place where our kids would be as happy as we are.” Because of the pandemic, a lot of this had to be done over FaceTime, which made it really hard. But [the planners] did a great job making our house come to life.

The Cobbs met through friends they both had in 2011 and got married six years later. They enjoy having family and friends over. Randall, who has been in the NFL for eleven years, says, “We always have guests on game day weekends during the football season.” We’re still in the middle of a pandemic, but normally, we have team meetings at our house once a month. Having coworkers over for dinner or a game night is also fun for us.

This doesn’t mean that the house is only meant for entertainment. It is meant to be lived in. With this in mind, the Cobbs wanted the room to have a lot of natural light. This request, however, did not work with the plan of the main bedroom. Roxanne Wimmel says, “We wanted to make their bedroom very dark.” “So, the Cobbs told us, ‘Okay, we’ll believe you on this.'” When the homeowners saw the room again a few weeks later, they fell in love: “We love it,” Randall says. We made the smartest move there.

Because of where they come from, the Cobbs have family-oriented morals that show up in their home. Their three-year-old son, Caspian, was named after the Caspian Sea to honor Aiyda’s Iranian background. Cade, his one-year-old brother, was named after a mountain range in Tennessee, where Randall is from. “Most importantly, the home had to feel like home,” Aiyda says. This style has always interested both Randall and me.