Herman Edwards remembers the moment like it was an hour ago. Chad Pennington said he feels like it took place “a thousand years ago.”

Whatever the perception, the incident helped further forge a bond between coach and quarterback. That’s really about the only positive to come out of Pennington’s devastating left hand and wrist fracture suffered a year ago in the annual Jets-Giants preseason game.

The two teams will meet again at 7 o’clock tonight, for the 35th consecutive year in preseason.

Brandon Short, the Giants’ linebacker who dragged Pennington to the turf, causing him to fall awkwardly on his left wrist and, subsequently, shattering the Jets’ season, is no longer in New York. He’s now with Carolina.

Pennington insisted he won’t have a single thought about what happened to him a year ago, insisting he never goes into a game worrying about getting hurt.

“My goal is just to come out and have two solid quarters,” Pennington said. “The goal is not just ‘to get through it.’ When you think of it that way, that’s when you can get hurt.”

Asked if he’s 100 percent recovered, Pennington said, “Oh yes. I feel like I’ve made progress and I feel good.”

Herman Edwards agreed.

“He has a much better feel for the players on the team and what their hot buttons are,” Edwards said. “He’s very hard on himself, but at this point he knows he has to be an example every day. He has to be the guy that does the right things all the time. He feels he’s one of the leaders on this team. He can handle it.”

Handling that nightmare that unfolded last August at Giants Stadium was a test for everyone.

“I knew it was bad when they were bringing him off the field,” Edwards recalled. “The doc looked at me and I kind of knew not to look, because of the way he was holding his hand. By the time we got to the [sideline] they said, ‘We’ve got to do surgery.’

“The hardest part for Chad and myself was we couldn’t talk for a whole day to each other,” Edwards said. “We were both too emotional about it. I didn’t want him to feel bad about what happened. Knowing the type of kid he was, he was going to put it on himself. He was going to blame himself. I didn’t want to have that conversation with him at that point.

“Then, when we talked, it wasn’t easy at all. It was a tough moment for him and me personally. There were some other things in his life he was dealing with, too. This was all coming down on this poor kid and I was sitting there going, ‘Wow.’ ”

Indeed, not only was Pennington lying in the hospital trying to cope with the worst thing that had ever happened to him professionally. But his father-in-law, to whom he was very close, was dying of leukemia and would die two days after Pennington left the hospital.

“More important than football was what I was going through with my family at the time,” Pennington recalled. “That was more on my mind than the injury. It seemed like everything came down in my life at once. It wasn’t just the football injury. It was family issues and all the emotions that are involved with that. It was a difficult time for me.

“But Coach [Edwards], as he always does, was a man about the whole situation. He let me re-group and get myself together.”

Pennington took some time to be with his wife’s family and then returned to New York to vigorously rehabilitate his wrist. Tonight he returns to the scene of the accident. He insisted that the sight of the Giants’ uniforms across the line of scrimmage will not represent a bad memory.

“The only thing that reminds me of my injury is my scars,” Pennington said. “It seems like a thousand years ago.”