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EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Don't remind any of the New York Jets about their last meeting with the local rival Giants.

The Jets' season pretty much fell apart that Saturday night last summer when Chad Pennington broke his right wrist. By the time Pennington returned in midseason, the Jets were headed for a 6-10 record and their first non-playoff season under coach Herman Edwards.

So heading into Friday night's annual matchup with the Giants, Pennington prefers not to look back -- particularly at that night last August.

"It's just all a blur," the quarterback said. "It's not even on my mind. It doesn't even seem like it happened. It seems like 1,000 years ago. Only the scar reminds me."

Pennington has the physical scar, and the Jets have the emotional scars. They simply were not the same team without their leader, who was coming off a superb 2002 season in which he replaced Vinny Testaverde as the starter and led New York to an AFC East title and a playoff victory over Indianapolis.

The offense didn't function well under Testaverde, and Pennington pressed to make up for lost time once he got back in the lineup.

"I've tried to put that out of my mind completely now," said offensive coordinator Paul Hackett. "The thing about the preseason is that it's always a double-edged sword. You have to play and you have to get your rhythm. You have to get your timing in a game situation, but you have to have your players.

"There's that bob and weave, and he'd never had any kind of injury. It was a freak injury, and I knew at that point that we had not prepared. Vinny had prepared for his role. He had not prepared for the starting role. We had made that decision the year before. That was tough. You just have to realize as a coach that it's part of the game."

Pennington, who is close to agreeing to a lucrative contract extension, and the Jets' other starters figure to play half the game at least. Coach Herman Edwards wants to give running backs Curtis Martin and LaMont Jordan plenty of carries, and he needs to see the revamped defense perform together over a longer period of time than it has in the previous two exhibitions.

"My goal is to come out with two solid quarters together and get a feel for coming back after halftime for a series or two," Pennington said.

Giants coach Tom Coughlin also is eager to see how his starters fare for more than one or two series, particularly a No. 1 defense that has been torched so far.

"I'm looking for improvement in all areas, to be honest with you," Coughlin said. "I think our first groups have to match up better than they have been matching up.

"I'd like to see us be able to run the ball with a little more consistency than we have. I'd like to be able to get some pressure, so that we might do a better job in coverage. I hope we tackle better coming out of the secondary than we did a week ago. I'd like to go back to where we are not making the penalties, the foolish penalties that cropped up again last week with nine penalties, the majority of them on offense. I'd like to return to that ball security stuff that we talked about all along. We had one turnover in the preseason, but a costly one. I'd like to be able to eliminate that again, if we can."

He selected Kurt Warner to open the game at quarterback, followed by prize rookie Eli Manning. Both should get an equal number of snaps with the first team.

Coughlin's best defender, All-Pro end Michael Strahan, doesn't think facing the Jets is a big deal, even with the memory of Pennington's injury making the game's story line a bit more interesting.

"Oh man, I forgot all about that, to be honest with you," he said. "We're looking at it a bit different just because the Jets already came ... and scrimmaged against us. It's almost as if we have gotten it out of the way."

Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press

This story is from ESPN.com's automated news wire. Wire index