Ranking the five most important Seattle Seahawks heading into 2023

Number 4 - Seattle Seahawks cornerback Tariq Woolen

The Seattle Seahawks secondary should be excellent in 2023, but a lot of that is determined by second-year player Tariq Woolen. Woolen far exceed most national pundit's expectations in 2022 and made the Pro Bowl after having 6 interceptions and becoming the kind of shutdown corner the Seahawks had missed for some time.

But Woolen also wasn't as good late in the season as he was early and he was pretty awful in the Seattle Wild Card loss to the San Francisco 49ers in last year's playoffs. San Francisco had no fear in targeting him 8 times. 49ers receivers had 4 catches on those 8 targets for 88 yards with a long of 33. That number of yards was the most Woolen gave up last year.

One of the biggest questions about Woolen entering this year is was he truly as good as he showed for much of 2022 or was it more a matter of teams just weren't prepared for his ability after not truly having enough tape on him? The hope is that he is obviously even better this year after getting a year of experience. He has the raw ability to be fantastic, of course, and now he just needs to apply the mental side.

There is also the assumption that Woolen will be good this year as much of the talk of a cornerback battle is between veteran Mike Jackson and Devon Witherspoon for the player that starts opposite Woolen. But what if Woolen digresses quite a bit and the starters become Witherspoon and Jackson? Plus, Woolen suffered a knee injury in minicamp and is still trying to get back healthy for Week 1 and has missed training camp so far.