Forward Error Correction (FEC) is used ubiquitously in the communication pipeline. We explore noncooperative decoding where we aim to recover the code rate of a linear block code. We present a metric to characterize the quality of the code rate recovery which uses any rank based estimation technique. We derive a closed form expression for this metric in terms of the algorithmic and the environmental parameters and assert that it should be low for good recovery. We use this metric to derive an expression for a better code rate estimate in high noise conditions and compare it with existing estimates. Finally we validate the derived expression for the metric and the improved performance in the code rate estimate by simulating the recovery of a Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) code. This also enables us to derive the optimal algorithmic parameters for recovery.