CLEVELAND -- It’s open season for NFL general managers, and that means one thing when it comes to the Green Bay Packers: Speculation ramps up over who will be in charge of the football operation whenever the Ted Thompson era ends.

It started up again after the move the Packers’ opponent Sunday, the Cleveland Browns, made this week when they hired John Dorsey as their GM. Dorsey, the longtime former Packers scout, had been out of work since the Kansas City Chiefs surprisingly let him go over the summer.

The usual Packers threesome of high-ranking scouts Brian Gutekunst, Alonzo Highsmith and Eliot Wolf will soon become mentioned as possible candidates as other jobs open, if they haven’t already been discussed.

Wolf interviewed for two GM jobs last offseason -- Indianapolis and San Francisco -- and has been named in connection with the New York Giants' opening after they fired longtime GM Jerry Reese. Gutekunst also had two interviews last year -- Buffalo and San Francisco -- and likely will be a hot name again.

Highsmith has been denied permission to interview for pro personnel director positions before, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if Dorsey went after him.

Every one of those personnel men could have been in play if the Packers were looking for Thompson’s replacement right now. The problem is, perhaps none of them knows how much longer the 64-year-old general manager plans to keep working, and each might feel as though his best chance to run a team sooner than later will come elsewhere.

Packers president Mark Murphy might be the only one who knows what the ultraprivate Thompson is thinking, and there’s no guarantee Murphy even knows. He said last summer that the job essentially is Thompson’s for as long as he wants it.

Thompson, who was hired by former president Bob Harlan in 2005, is under contract through the end of next season and likely the draft that follows it.

That could be why Dorsey jumped at the chance to rebuild the Browns. Dorsey still thinks fondly of the Packers and loves the area. He regularly vacations in Door County over the summer, and in fact negotiated Justin Houston's contract extension in July 2015 from the Wisconsin vacation paradise while sitting in a hardware-store parking lot because he couldn’t get cellphone reception at his cottage.

Even if Dorsey coveted the Packers’ job, perhaps he knew either that it wouldn’t open within the next year or that he wouldn’t be Murphy’s first choice.

Murphy has not made one football decision since he became president in 2007 -- unless you count keeping Thompson around as a decision -- and he has never tipped his hand about his post-Thompson plans.

Those around the organization know that Murphy also thinks highly of Russ Ball, the Packers' vice president of football administration/player finance who is as much a part of the franchise's daily football operations as Thompson is. Ball, 58, would be a nontraditional choice as a general manager because his background is in salary-cap management and not in scouting like Thompson, Dorsey, Wolf and the rest of the in-house candidates. Ball, along with Packers vice president/general counsel Ed Policy, might be better positioned as Murphy’s eventual replacement.

Dorsey being off the board and in charge of rebuilding the Browns narrowed the pool slightly but made things no less certain as to Thompson’s successor, whenever that happens. Thompson is single, has no family nearby and has few hobbies outside of football, so perhaps he'll want to keep going longer than anyone thinks even though he has slowed down physically in recent years. He’s tied to Mike McCarthy, the only coach he has ever hired, and there’s no reason to think he’d make a coaching change, which means the Thompson-McCarthy combination could extend beyond their current contracts, which both expire sometime after the 2018 season.

Whatever happens the rest of this season, and even if the Packers (6-6) lose Sunday to the winless Browns, don’t expect Murphy to shake anything up. The only change would come if Thompson decides to step down. Then, the most oft-asked question about the Packers’ front-office structure would finally be answered.