There's only so much that Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid can say about what he's seen on the field through six voluntary OTA practices.

The guys are in shorts and there's no contact allowed.

Basically, it's a time for guys to work on their technique, and it's a time for coaches to try different things in their schemes.

Consequently, it was pretty obvious during Thursday's practice that the Chiefs were working on some of their more creative plays.

But as is always the case this time of the year, the questions during the post-practice pressers always seem to surround the progress of the rookies to pick up what they're being taught.

For most of them, it's more than they've ever had thrown at them before, and their ability to take what they're learning in the classroom and pre-practice meetings and have that translate to the field is paramount in whether or not they can make an impact early in their NFL careers.

With that, Reid has been pleased about what he's seen thus far from the six draft picks and handful of undrafted free agents.

"The young guys are getting better," Reid explained. "In this day and age of professional football, young guys have to play. You've got to get them incorporated in there and they've got to be a part of it. That's how this works with the salary cap and how that thing is situated.

"There has to be an urgency there with the way we set this up with the different phases, well, the league sets it up, but I look at that as a plus with how they're going about their business."

Reid, who prides himself more as a teacher of football than anything else, spoke of the steps and process it takes from the entire coaching staff to get these young guys up to speed.

"We're here as coaches to be teachers," Reid added. "That's what we're here to do. When I hire guys, that's what I'm looking for—guys who can teach. They've got to do it well in whatever time period you have to get it done.

"I would tell you we try to keep it as precise and as accurate as we possibly can, and then you go from crawl, to walk, to run, between the walk-throughs and the whole deal."

Reid said he's seen a huge difference from the young guys between rookie minicamp, which took place three weeks ago and right now at OTAs.

"Yeah," Reid said of seeing a progression. "Especially from that first rookie minicamp—that thing was a mess at times. We're asking them to do a lot in a short period of time without any pre-teaching going on. We hand it to them, boom they're out here and they go.

"You look at the young guys that we've kept around and there's some big jumps there."

Reid was asked specifically about rookie running back Kareem Hunt.

"He's a pretty smart kid when we're throwing a ton at him," Reid said. "That's a tough position— (running back) and tight end. You've got to know a load there, and [Hunt] does a good job with that."

The Chiefs have their final four OTA practices of the year next week (Tuesday-Friday), followed by mandatory minicamp the week after that (June 13-15).

Then, it's just a few weeks off until training camp.

The 2017 NFL season is getting closer.