Sadly on macOS Sierra, you have to use Karabiner-Elements, which doesn't (yet, I hope) include support for long-press=ctrl.
I use Caps Lock for Cmd or Ctrl, depending on which keyboard I'm using, and <Leader><Leader> for Escape on Vim.
I don't know where I got this idea from, but I also use <Leader>w to exit to normal mode and save. It's so ingrained in me, that when I use other editors very often I have "Unexpected token" errors because of a ",w" in the middle of the code.
I haven't tried it myself. Honestly it's one of the things keeping me from upgrading to Sierra. Need to test it out first.