EARTH CITY, Mo. -- Of the many choices the St. Louis Rams offered for this week's NFC special teams player of the week honors, it's receiver/returner Stedman Bailey who is taking home the award.

The Rams special teams offered a virtuoso performance in the team's 28-26 upset victory over the Seattle Seahawks last week and there was no shortage of options from within that group to take home the award.

Punter Johnny Hekker could have earned it after completing an 18-yard pass to running back Benny Cunningham on a fake punt to help seal the win. Hekker also averaged 48 yards per punt, third highest in the league this week.

Cunningham was also a strong candidate after hauling in the pass from Hekker and coming up with a 75-yard kick return that set up the Rams' first touchdown.

But it's Bailey who is walking away with the hardware after executing the most difficult steps of one of the most creative punt returns of all time. On the play now known as "Mountaineer" because it prominently involves former West Virginia teammates Bailey and Tavon Austin, Bailey was charged with running down Jon Ryan's punt, catching it over his shoulder on the run, turning around and sprinting 90 yards for a touchdown.

Plenty of other players played a major role in getting the Seahawks to run the opposite direction toward Austin and deserve credit for it as well but Bailey certainly did enough to garner the award. Taking into account that it was Bailey's first-ever punt return attempt, he's now got quite a batting average.

"This whole week we never got a great ball up exactly how their punter does it but we figured just from watching the tape I would know exactly where the ball would land," Bailey said Sunday. "For me to catch it, it was just my receiver skills and catching the ball over my head. I turned around, secured it and just started running.

"That was my first time ever catching a punt in my life. So that was pretty good."

One punt return, one special teams award.