Certain aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to techniques for combining a plurality of decision metrics of a scrambled payload in a 5G wireless communications system. For example, in some cases, combining decision metrics of a scrambled payload may generally involve receiving a first payload at a receiver that was scrambled both before and after encoding, generating a second payload at the receiver with selectively set payload mask bits, and using the selectively-set payload mask bits in the second payload to descramble the first payload.