Deion Branch was a notable recent example. I definitely believe there's a late-career shadow roster as well as an early one -- or at the least, I believe that they'll take the chance on cutting marginal vets to avoid guaranteeing their whole salary game 1.
I didn't realize Branch had bounced back and forth, at least not in the way i thought the shadow roster idea worked, which iirc was more in line with Ventrone's ping pong career in NE. I would love to see it in play it just seems more like something we like to speculate about than reality, at least to me it does. Appreciate the example though.