Reproducing lepton mixing in a texture zero model

We note that the emerging features of lepton mixing can be reproduced if, with inverted neutrino mass ordering, both the smallest neutrino mass and the ττ element of the neutrino mass matrix vanish. Then, the atmospheric neutrino mixing angle is less than maximal and the Dirac phase δ is close to π. We derive the correlations among the mixing parameters and show that there is a large cancellation in the effective mass responsible for neutrinoless ββ decay. Three simple seesaw models leading to our scenario are provided.