Yates had given Forest a 16th-minute lead, only for Jamie Vardy to level for the hosts. But in the second-half, Chris Wood took over to strike twice and fire Forest into fifth place on the Premier League table.
Yates later said, "I thought it was quite an open game at the start, a bit like a basketball match. We don't mind that, we've got pace and power up top. I want to add goals into my game more, it'll take me up a level if I can add that from midfield.
"We saw they were playing a box and we couldn't get pressure on. We just dropped one of ours at the right time to match their box and we ended up turning the ball over at times."
On his poor miss, he added: "There was spin on the ball! I was just begging they didn't score to make it 3-2."
"We're in fantastic form and the lads are really confident. We thought the more the game wore on, we could start implementing our ideas. We tried to make it tense for their fans.
"There's so much more we can do, I'm genuinely we didn't score four or five. I should have scored and that was game over."