It's been spoken about at length before, but I think he's almost a very good bowler in several different ways, but not quite in any of them.
There is no standout weakness about him that you can usually point to in an unsuccessful bowler to explain why he won't be successful. He's fast enough, accurate enough, gets enough bounce, bowls well enough to a plan and gets enough movement for Test level. He's got all the tools in that regard -- nothing in particular to work on to correct a flaw.
What he doesn't have though is a major strength that he can build his bowling around and get batsmen out with. He's not fast enough, accurate enough, bouncy enough etc to make any of those aspects the main feature of his bowling. As such, he'll probably look to be bowling better regularly but take less wickets than someone like Jordon who is a significantly worse bowler at lower levels but has a couple of genuine strengths to take wickets with in Tests even when he's bowling poorly overall.
It's often said that Woakes is a jack of all trades but the master of none because he's almost a Test bowler and almost a Test batsman. But I'd extend that even further to his bowling specifically -- he's almost a Test quality swing bowler, almost a Test quality fast bowler, almost a Test quality line bowler etc. I like to root for these bowlers and instinctively we think they'll be serviceable but I think in reality allround bowlers with no big strength to take wickets with are less effective than we'd imagine.
In saying all that, because he's such a rounded bowler, a small increase in overall skill could result in a exponential increase in results. Given he's a #7 standard Test batsman as well, that means he's a player England have every right to be quite interested in; he's some slight improvements away from being a huge player, if he can ever manage them.
