Well when Ted Thompson took over during the off season I thought it would take 2-3 years to recover from some mistakes made by the previous GM.
This year they have absorbed a lot of cap hits. There are few players that could lead to large cap hits except Harris, Clifton, KGB, and Franks. Brett leaving would not hurt the cap. Brett is not leaving anytime soon.
Of the those, none will be leaving soon except through bad injury. Harris may be the first if he slows down but as we have seen he still is effective. It might be Carroll but his cap hit would not be this large.
Although painful this should be one of the last big cap hits for awhile. It also means there is less cap money this year to apply to signing guys like Fisher, Kampmann, Longwell and Little to new contracts.
The 49'ers got their cap hits over with last year with 20% of cap as dead money. The Packers are at about 14% of their 2005 cap in dead money.
If not forcing their rookie QB into the line up the 49'ers would be doing better. I suggest keeping an eye on how the Niners fair as a rough estimation for the Packers. The Packer cap hit is not as bad and the draft choices will not be as good, but something to consider.