About the only way I could see them doing anything to gain significant cap space is to add phantom years to the end of the contract. In effect, push cap dollars to a year they know he will be retired, or gone. That's really not the Packers' way of doing things.

The cap impact is not a primary concern for the players. Peppers received $8.5 M to play last year. Does McGinn think he will or should play for significantly less than that this year? The Packers could have structured his relatively short contract with little bonus and substantially equal salaries each year. From Peppers perspective, that is what it is. His incomes for the three years are $8.5M, $9.5M and $8.M. Apparently the Packers wanted some cap relief in 2014, so a big part of his income last year was in the form of a signing bonus.