ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — Rashee Rice strolled around a corner and into a white tent alongside the Chiefs’ training camp practice fields at Missouri Western State. He placed two hands on a lectern, one on each side of a microphone, and nodded to signal his preparedness for questions.

It’s that familiar time of year.

It’s a familiar setting.

And it’s a most familiar conversation.

For six minutes, give or take, Rice talked not strictly about football, but about a tumultuous offseason — about another tumultuous offseason — that he could characterize as routine as his knee-cleanup procedure.

His legal troubles escalated to jail time in June, after his positive THC test violated a probation specifically designed to stop this conversation from returning for a third installment.

“A learning experience,” he said. “A reality check.”

This is his sentiment on Aug. 11, 2026.

And Aug. 1, 2025.

And Aug. 6, 2024.

It was two years ago that Rice stood in this very tent and said, “I’m just continuing to surround myself with people (who) will allow me to grow.”

It was one year ago that Rice stood in this very tent and proclaimed, “I’ve completely changed. Honestly, you’ve got to learn from things like that.”

And now Rice stood at the same microphone and said all the same things, as though practice makes perfect.

At some point, and Rice has long blown past that point, it’s no longer about the words in the news conferences.

It’s about the decisions during the 364 days sandwiched between them.

What can he say? What would possibly change anyone’s mind now? We can fine-tooth-comb the words, but it’s not just about the similarities in the words we’ve heard before.

It’s about his actions — or, ideally, the lack thereof.

The familiarity of a news conference doesn’t mean that Rice is incapable of changing. Nor does it mean he hasn’t learned from an abominable decision to race a luxury SUV some 119 miles per hour down a highly-trafficked Dallas highway, causing a six-vehicle crash from which he was fortunate everyone could walk away.

It means he has to prove it. He’s cornered himself into a position in which the benefit of the doubt long ago sprinted out the back door.

That’s part of the complicated aftermath of his offseason decisions, so complicated that no one really wants to publicly make the point. But Rice is popular among his teammates. The way he described himself Tuesday — a positive guy who’s smiling “mostly at all times” — is exactly the way most see him. He smiled through most of his more light-hearted questions Tuesday.

He’s attentive in meetings, his coaches say. He’s pleasant in the building. Heck, until late last season, he had typically made himself available for media beyond the requirement, sticking around his locker for an extra question or two if you had an extra question or two.

That doesn’t excuse his decisions.

It makes them all the more frustrating.

He’s capable of more, and yet the reality is he has participated in just 12 of the past 37 games in which the Chiefs have played, between the regular season and playoffs combined.

If you want to know what the Chiefs think of his lack of availability — the combination of some bad injury luck and some self-inflicted suspensions — again, the actions speak loudly. The Chiefs seem content to let him play out a contract year absent a long-term extension.

They’re choosing the same path as this column — they’d like to see him prove it. They have put their faith in him before, and it has left them embarrassed.

The purpose here is not to re-litigate the past, but to observe its ongoing relevance.

Rice has missed games for reasons mostly outside his control, a string of injuries that include his quarterback taking him out on a tackle during a game in Los Angeles. But he has also left the Chiefs short-handed while serving suspensions that were not only avoidable, but inexcusable.

If there’s a wrinkle in what he said Tuesday, it would rest there. This is about the collision of both. He rehabbed the cleanup procedure on his knee while in jail — between comedy specials he watched to keep his mind right, as he framed it. He had such a turbulent summer than when asked about a trying month, he actually misunderstood it to mean his rehab, not the month he spent locked up.

He has moved on, he insists, and is “100 percent locked in on what’s going on now with the team.”

That’s still up to him. That option is there.

There’s a privilege still in front of him. The pattern might have become the enemy — but the future can become the opportunity.

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