OK, since a question was asked.
Any player with a long term contract who will not be carried on the 40 will be designated, with waivers, the day of the R5 draft freeze. They will not be eligible for the R5, and there is no way to make them R5 eligible under any circumstances, but they would have to clear waivers after the R5 draft is completed.
I've mentioned this privately but, if the argument is "WW claims will not be impact players", the counter argument is they come from the same pool as the R5 draft eligible players. So, IOW, none of the players swapping teams will be impact players. And, if that's the case, I fail to understand the purpose of this concept.
And, for the record, I wouldn't care when teams got down to 20 as long as it was BEFORE the R5 draft freeze.