A bad engineer who delivered a difficult project on time with zero support from everyone who was supposed to help me? lol.

Don't believe the hype, just because management says someone is shit, doesn't actually mean that. People have lots of ulterior motives.

Did it occur to you that because my old boss was demoted suddenly and made an engineer (vs manager) that our team head count was now over budget, and they had to get rid of someone?

And to answer your intelligent followup question, No. they didn't even put out a req for that position till a few months ago.