The position of being the favorite team or not will certainly greatly influence who Arsenal will face next if they succeed in eliminating Porto in the round of 16.
My prediction is that looking at the existing teams, there is a very big chance that Arsenal will meet one of these strong teams, and if that happens it will be very difficult for Arsenal to advance to the next round, but before that, they have to be able to overcome the Porto team which is quite good even though many people predict that Arsenal will beat Porto, but in my opinion, the chances of both teams are the same, because Arsenal can sometimes appear disappointing, such as when they lost to West Ham in the English Premier League.
The playoffs are a very difficult stage, everything needs to be decided in two games, but perhaps for Arsenal there is an advantage in that they will play the first game at Estádio do Dragao, in case of a win or a draw their chances of winning the return match will be higher.
I don’t consider Porto a weak opponent, they are capable of beating Arsenal, especially if you look at Arsenal’s latest results in five games, they won only once in the match with Brighton, they lost the matches with Aston Villa and West Ham, and they drew with Liverpool and PSV , so Arsenal may be in decline.
You are right, if Arsenal can get at least a draw in their first meeting then their chances become bigger, because in the second meeting they will play the match with home status, of course it is a very good opportunity for them.
But Porto is not a club that can be conquered easily, their presence in this round shows that they can indeed compete. In the group stage they also did not disappoint because they could collect 12 points from the 6 matches played, actually it was the same points that Barcelona had, but they lost in goal productivity so that only put them in 2nd place.
Arsenal are also in an unhappy state for sure, as they failed to win in their last match in the domestic league and kept them in 2nd place.