Methods and apparatuses for providing soft and blind combining for PUSCH CQI processing are disclosed. In an exemplary embodiment, a method includes generating a plurality of hypothetical rank indicator (RI) values associated with a user equipment (UE), and concurrently soft-combining channel quality information (CQI) and RI information associated with the UE that is contained in a received subframe of symbols. The RI information is soft-combined to generate a soft-combined RI bit stream and the CQI information is soft-combined based on the plurality of hypothetical RI values to generate a plurality of soft-combined CQI bit streams, respectively. The method also includes decoding the soft-combined RI bit stream to generate a decoded RI value, and decoding a selected soft-combined CQI bit stream based on the decoded RI value to generate a decoded CQI value.