There are still two more rounds to reach the final, each team has the potential to fall in the round of 16, even though the draw results bring together the seeded and unseeded teams. I predict AC Milan, Leverkusen, Liverpool, Sporting, West Ham, Benfica, Brighton and Marseille will advance to the quarter finals. This is only a temporary assumption, because the opportunities for these teams may change in the future, they may improve or they may experience setbacks. Liverpool is the favorite team to win in this seasons, after that there are Leverkusen and AC Milan. However, the European League is full of surprises, fortunately Sevilla did not appear this season, they failed to qualify for the play offs because they finished in fourth place in group B of the Champion League.
your choice is very right and the most important thing is that the main candidates to reach the final round are only Liverpool and Leverkusen who are currently considered very strong in the european league this season and I will not ignore Milan even though this team is also very consistent but it seems very difficult if In the quarter finals, Milan had to compete against Leverkusen and Liverpool, which would be a big disaster for Milan and the opportunity to reach the final would be more difficult if they had competed against one of the two strongest teams in the quarter finals.
Very strong teams in the cup have made it to the last 16 and are already scaring their opponents. In my opinion, the favorites for the cup are Liverpool, Leverkusen and Milan. There may be surprises in football and no one can be sure of the outcome, but still the level of these teams is higher than other teams. Maybe they will care more about the matches in their domestic league and will not show much interest in the matches in this cup. If such a thing happens, there may be unexpected teams among the teams that pass the tour.
Especially after the last 16 rounds, the performance of all teams increases and the team can be motivated in a different way. These motivations can lead to matches being played harder and being prone to surprising results.