Friday marked five months since receiver Rashee Rice had season-ending knee surgery, and things look good for a full return to the Chiefs.

The lateral collateral ligament in Rice’s right knee needed to repaired following a freak collision with quarterback Patrick Mahomes during a game against the Chargers.

Rice has been posting social-media videos of his workouts in Florida with Sharif “Reef” Tabbah, a doctor of physical therapy, and he seems to be moving without an issues.

Rice was on the I Am Athlete podcast and was asked if the injury affected him mentally.

“Yeah, for a long time, honestly,” Rice said, “especially just me seeing X (Xavier Worthy), Hollywood (Brown), just all my guys out there being able to ball. We had training camp, and just training camp was a glimpse of what we knew was gonna happen for the rest of the season. So, I mean, it took a toll on me mentally, but the best thing I could do was continue to surround myself with those guys and just being around the program as much as I can so I can keep my mind clear.”

The Chiefs’ brass thought Rice was going to have a huge season and his stats before the injury show why the team had faith in him.

Through three games, Rice had 24 receptions for 288 yards and two touchdowns. That pace for a full season would have resulted in 136 receptions, 1,632 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns.

Rice had a close connection on the field with Mahomes.

“Really, it felt like just me and Pat was on the exact same page,” Rice said. “It kind of felt like college all over again. Wasn’t worried about getting hit. I was just kind of worried about making sure I had the ball in my hand and whatever happened after that, like I was just in go mode.”

With his second season ended prematurely, Rice said he is eager to return to the Chiefs and he talked about the areas in which he’d like to see improvement.

Rice then outlined his goals for the 2025 season.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of people ready for me to come back next season,” Rice said. “So really, my main focus is to make sure I’m back to where I left off before I got injured, and then basically take a couple steps forward from that. I basically ain’t even scraped the surface of what I was going to do. So I was real surprised with myself throughout those first three games, just to be able to basically see everything I was (doing in the) offseason coming to life.”